Etiqueta: Atlantic

Coral reefs, known as the rainforests of the sea, provide humans with food, entertaining, medicines, and coastal protection. The provisions we get from this highly diverse ecosystem are threatened by human and natural factors. Amongst the natural factors, high sea temperatures caused by stronger than usual El Niño events are believed to be the most dangerous. High sea temperatures can cause coral bleaching, a condition where corals lose their symbiotic algae. When sea temperatures remain high for extended periods of time, like during a strong El Niño, corals can die as they cannot live for long periods without their symbiotic algae. Three severe El Niño events have been linked to three severe global coral bleaching events. In 1998, a severe El Nino event resulted in a 30% coral mortality due to bleaching in the reefs of the Western Indian Ocean. The story repeated itself in 2010, this time coral mortality due to coral bleaching reached 80% in many parts of the world, including the Caribbean. The 2015-2016 El Niño event raised the alarm for another global coral bleaching event that wipe out up to 50% of the remaining coral reefs in the Great Barrier Reef alone. Here, I shared my bleaching observations, made during visits to coral reefs in three main ocean basis.  The visits span a period of 5 months. My observations provide some contrasting results and suggests that we are still far from understanding the response of coral reefs to climate change. Harmful algal blooms are known to cause serious negative impacts to coral reef communities. Therefore, I worried a lot when I knew it had reached Cousin Island Special Marine Reserve. Western Indian Ocean On October 2015, a harmful algal bloom (HAB) hit the inner granitic islands of the Seychelles. Harmful algal blooms are known to cause