The Bleaching
- clayoperations
- Sep 6, 2020
- 2 min read
By Vivien Huang
Bleached coral on Australia's Great Barrier Reef near Port Douglas on Feb. 20, 2017.Brett Monroe Garner / Greenpeace via Reuters file
Tropical reefs, bleached bone white, dying, faster, and faster. The massive ocean ecosystem, more and more vulnerable with every reef bleached.
Corals are not simple animals. They’re extremely sensitive animals known as coral polyps. These delicate creatures spend hundreds of years building up their hard calcium skeletons into the reefs of today.
These polyps have a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship with a special type of algae that lives inside their fantastic calcium structures. The coral provides a safe and stable structure to dwell on, while the algae produce food for the corals to feed on as well as gives the corals their spectacular colors.
When ocean temperature rises, even by just the slightest margin, corals become stressed and expel their much-needed algae. Not only do they lose their source of food, but their colors are completely drained away, which is why this phenomenon has been aptly named “bleaching.”Extreme bleaching will kill the coral, and death is irreversible.
So, why should we care about the death of coral? There is a simple answer: biodiversity. Reefs are often called “the rainforests of the sea,” as thousands of different creatures call the incredibly diverse ecosystem home. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Associations (NOAA), over 25% of marine fish depend on the reefs to survive. The destruction of these underwater rainforests has eerily similar consequences of terrestrial deforestation. Habitat destruction will endanger and eventually kill the life that once flourished. Maintaining this biodiversity in the ocean will increase sustainability for all life on Earth.
You may not think it, but we humans depend on these reefs as well. According to the NOAA, “over half a billion people depend on reefs for food, income, and protection.”
Additionally, fishing and tourism bring millions of dollars in revenue to local US businesses.
Fortunately, there have been large efforts to restore these reefs such as regrowing the corals in nurseries to transplant or reattaching broken pieces of corals. You can learn more details about a few restoration efforts here: NOAA reef restoration, Coral Restoration Foundation, Secore. There are also many things you can do in your everyday life to help out indirectly; using minimal plastic, using minimal to no pesticides, and eating sustainable seafood!
If you’d like to learn more, check out these resources:
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