More than four fifths of the world’s coral reefs have been affected by the devastating mass bleach caused by high unprecedented oceanic temperatures, which have given a ghostly paleness to many reefs that were previously colorful, as the scientific authorities said Wednesday.
The bleaching is due to anomalies in the temperature of the water that make the corals expel the colorful algae that live in their tissues. Without the help of algae, which provide nutrients to corals, they cannot survive. According to the International Initiative of Coral Reef and data of the US National and Atmospheric Administration of the US, which monitor the health of the reefs, the fourth mass bleach in the world, declared by scientists a year ago, has shown few signs of deceleration.
On the contrary, it has grown to become the most widespread that is recorded, with 84% of the reef areas, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and the Pacific, subject to an intense thermal stress of a duration that is expected to cause bleaching from March 2025.
Last year he was the hottest registered and the first to reach more than 1.5 degrees Celsius rather than in the preindustrial era, which contributed to unprecedented oceanic temperatures and tripled the previous record of marine heat waves worldwide.
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“The magnitude and scope of thermal stress are shocking,” said Melanie McField, a marine scientist who works in the Caribbean. “Some reefs that until now had not suffered great thermal stress and thought they were somewhat resistant, succumbed to partial mortalities in 2024.”
“The bleaching is always creepy: as if a silent snowfall had descended on the reef,” he added.
In the previous episodes of 1998, 2010 and 2014-17, 21%, 37% and 68% of the reefs suffered thermal bleaching stress, respectively. Marine biologists had warned at the beginning of last year that the world’s reefs were about to suffer from mass bleaching after unprecedented oceanic heat months fed by the climate change induced by man and the climate pattern of El Niño, which produces unusually warm oceanic temperatures throughout Ecuador and in the Pacific.
In December 2024, a weak pattern of the girl, which usually brings colder oceanic temperatures, gave scientists hope that corals could recover, but only lasted three months. Instead, bleaching has continued to spread, said Coral Arrecifes Surveillance Coordinator of the NOAA, Derek Manzello.
The Solomon and Papua New Guinea Islands were recently added to the list of 82 countries and territories that record thermal stress due to bleaching in their waters. Scientists will take years to understand the global scope of the death of coral reefs, but claim that they have already observed a generalized mortality in parts of the Caribbean, the Red Sea already throughout the Great Australian coral barrier.
With Reuters information.
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