Great Barrier Reef Corals Hit Hard by Marine Heat Wave

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By Anupama Chandrasekaran, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: When an intense marine heat wave sent ocean temperatures soaring in 2023 and 2024, coral reefs around the world bleached. New research on the Great Barrier Reef’s One Tree Island shows that more than 50% of surveyed coral colonies that bleached died of heat stress and starvation. And even heat-resistant corals weren’t immune. When corals are stressed by warm water, they can lose the algae that live in their tissues. This process turns the coral white, earning it the name “coral bleaching.” Sometimes corals can recover, but if the stress is too intense, they die and eventually crumble into rubble and sand. “What we noticed in more recent times, when it gets really hot, they often die before they even fully bleach,” said marine biologist Maria Byrne at the University of Sydney.... 

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