Reducing pollution and curbing overfishing won’t prevent the severe bleaching that is killing coral at catastrophic rates, according to a study of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. In the end, researchers say, the only way to save the world’s coral from heat-induced bleaching is with a war on global warming.
Scientists are quick to note that local protection of reefs can help damaged coral recover from the stress of rising ocean temperatures. But the new research shows that such efforts are ultimately futile when it comes to stopping bleaching in the first place.
“We don’t have any tools to climate-proof corals,” said Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Australia and lead author of the study being published on Thursday in the journal Nature. “That’s a bit sobering. We can’t stop bleaching locally. We actually have to do something about climate change.”
Across the world, scores of brilliantly coloured coral reefs once teeming with life have in recent years become desolate, white graveyards. Their deaths due to coral bleaching have grown more frequent as ocean temperatures rise, mainly due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
“We don’t have any tools to climate-proof corals...We can’t stop bleaching locally. We actually have to do something about climate change”
The hot water stresses corals, forcing them to expel the colourful algae living inside them, which leaves the corals vulnerable to disease and death. Given enough time, bleached coral can recover if the water cools, but if the temperature stays too high for too long, the coral will die.
