Coral reef bleaching – 2012

Coral reef bleaching and it’s effects are killing the coral and the most important areas in underwater ecosystem as this is the home of many fishes in the sea. This is also their source of food most of the time. A coral reef is mostly where new eggs can be found. That’s why a small sign of damage to coral reefs is a sign of death to millions of different species of marine life. The biggest coral reef in the world is the Great Barrier Reef found in Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland in northeast Australia.

The Great Barrier Reef

Global Warming.

The coral reef is one of nature’s valuable gift to us however it’s likely to be banished in the surface of the ocean. Why? Well, it looks like human doesn’t value that gift as it seems that most reasons why our coral reef got “sick” are the human activities. Experts say that 58 percent of the world’s coral reefs were threatened by human activities. And that includes the latest information on the impacts of Global Warming and Coral reef bleaching which is by the way caused by humans. Note that coral reef takes years to recover. This is really a bad news. The two impacts are the main reason of today’s coral reef extinction and it’s reported that it goes bad to worse as years pass.

The Dilemma

Global warming is obviously caused by people around the globe and the worst effect it could give is the coral reef bleaching. This dilemma happens to coral reef when the surface of the ocean rise its temperature from warm to hot. When that happens, the zooxantheallae or the unicellular algae that gives the coral “life” will die leading to coral reef bleaching or the simple definition would be a “lifeless coral reef”. One example of worst coral reef bleaching in the record happened way back 2005 on the area of Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. And from the year 2010 up to present year, it is predicted to be even worse.

For that, will the time come that we can only see coral reef on pictures and not in real life?

I hope you enjoyed this small but very important feature.

The Coral Reef is most likely the place where all types of fishes stay to find their mate or lay eggs. Because of its very diversity, coral reefs are also called the “rainforest” of the ocean. Although these coral reefs account for only about 1% of the world’s ocean, they are home to 25% of life underwater.

But due to a lot of factors including human-related activities and the inevitable warming of the planet, these majestic structures have been slowly dying.

The world’s largest coral reef in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, has already been affected. Coral reef bleaching occurs when algae are forced to leave the polyps during high temperature in the seas. Some bleached corals recover in the next season but most of them die especially when all the algae that live in them are lost.  The magnitude of the damage is not yet confirmed but it is very visible when the reef is seen on top view.

The destruction of these reefs can result to an end to another ecosystem, termed as the DOMINO EFFECT. When this happens, those marine animals that depend on the coral reefs are most likely be wiped out due to predation. There will be an impact to the economy of the countries which depends largely on fishery. Shores will also be damaged and tourism will decline. The balance of nature will be disrupted and extinction of many species will occur.