That’s according to a report released Thursday by an global coalition of ocean experts, reef mappers and monitoring teams documenting the worldwide coral bleaching crisis.
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Based on their observation, scientists fear that the warm sea temperatures could result to a loss of more than 4,500 square miles or 12,000 square kilometers of corals, strongly affecting Hawaii and other tropical regions.
“Hawaii is getting hit with the worst coral bleaching they have ever seen, right now”, Eakin said. Corals don’t always after die after bleaching, but the current whiteout started in 2014, and a continuing El Niño could drag the phenomenon out to 2016.
Visiting coral reef scientist Rick MacPherson told Cayman 27 the threat reefs face from bleaching should reinforce the importance of protecting Cayman’s corals.
“We may be looking at losing somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 percent of the coral reefs this year”, NOAA coral reef watch coordinator Mark Eakin said.
Mr. Macpherson told Cayman 27 employing sustainable fishing practices, shark protection, and protecting waters from sedimentation and degradation, are all ways to give local coral a fighting chance.
Of course, this will threaten the entire existence of all coral across the plant. The United States says that this could be the worst they’ve seen in 65 years, spelling trouble for the Great Barrier Reef, where the coral contributes to the livelihood of animals and humans alike. “It’s severe. It’s extensive”.
Florida started getting hit in August. It said that corals, including in Hawaii, have been harmed by a huge mass of warm water called “The Blob” in the north eastern Pacific has harmed. In 2010, El Niño brought another.
So far the 1998 bleaching was worse, but that was the second year of an El Nino and we’re in the first of two years now, Eakin said.
NOAA produced forecasts of bleaching that show it as a giant red blob moving across the globe again.
The computer model forecasts “this horrendous dramatic” impact on the Great Barrier Reef, Hodgson said.
“If conditions continue to worsen, the Great Barrier Reef is set to suffer from widespread coral bleaching and subsequent mortality”, said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the Queensland’s Global Change Institute.
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And this, of course, is quite significant because while coral reefs only make up about one-tenth of one percent of the whole ocean floor they are, remarkably, home to 25 percent of all the fish species in the world. Coral reefs protect shorelines, produce tourism dollars and help provide food for 500 million people around the world, he said. The phenomenon causes coral reefs to expel the algae in their tissues and turn completely white.
