Sad news

[Piratefish]

Corals Face Catastrophic Bleaching: Scientific American Podcast

I didnt know where to put this.

 

[coolhandgoose]

That's interesting, especially since they "hope" for hurricanes to cool the water.
My understanding of the Caribbean is that all the islands are basically made of dead coral that's piled on top of eachother over the years. I wonder if this is just a cycle or.............dun dun dun GLOBAL WARMING!

 

[Bifferwine]

But hoping for a hurricane is no permanent solution. Ultimately, curbing the CO2 emissions that are trapping extra heat—and acidifying the oceans, another stress on coral—is the only fix that can save the reefs.

 

[Piratefish]

I dont know much about this but it could be some sort of cycle. Like after a fire new types of plants grow?? Maybe thats just wishful thinking. It is sad tho.

 

[Bifferwine]

That's true. When one group of animals or plants die off, another group usually takes over and fills in the niche they left behind. Unfortunately with corals, they are not fast growing like plants, and this is not a normal cycle for them, like a fire cycle. Those huge colonies of corals down there are tens of thousands of years old. Climatologists actually know a lot about past climates because they can date branches of corals just like they can date tree rings. The different layers of corals can tell scientists a lot of information -- about the temperature of the water, carbon and nutrient content in water, etc. A lot of what climatologists know is from analyzing corals that are really old.

 

[coolhandgoose]

That's pretty incredible that they can do that!

 

[Bifferwine]

Yeah, here is a page that breaks it down, if you are interested.

Coral paleoclimatology

In this photo of a Porites skeleton, you can see the rings that form the coral skeleton. Like a tree ring, each ring represents a year. And doing analysis on individual years can tell you lots about the water quality and climate of that year. These records go back thousands of years.

 

[coolhandgoose]

That's cool.

 

[BL1]

I was watching those oceans blue documentaries a couple weeks ago. And the scientists were talking about the bleaching problem where reefs are experiencing warmer currents. But they've found reefs in the Andaman Sea where the corals are surviving in warm waters that would bleach normal reefs Andaman Sea Coral May Hold the Secret to Warm Water Reef Survival : TreeHugger
In the documentary, they were talking about being able to take some of the algae from those corals in the sea and injecting it into corals on other reefs around the world as a kind of vaccine, to help them and survive and thrive in the warming ocean.

 

[Bifferwine]

That would be super cool if they could do that. But it seems so labor intensive!! And then you get into the controversy over genetically modifying species... It would definitely be an interesting experiment if they did that on half of a reef and compared the two halves years later.

 

[BL1]

Or even, if they got those coral farmer guys to try it out on their giant frag racks in the ocean

 

[Piratefish]

I thought I read in one of my books that there are corals that perfer water temps as high as 86?

 

[Bifferwine]

This is true. But not all corals are adapted to those type of temperatures, or temperatures consistently that high.

For the last 20 years or so, we've been having record high temps around the globe. Each year sets more records and is hotter than the last. Corals may be able to withstand a spike here or there, but if they are not adapted to that climate, they won't be able to adjust to it long-term.