Below the turquoise waters off the coast of Australia is one of the world’s natural wonders, an underwater rainbow jungle teeming with life that scientists have said is showing some of the clearest signs yet of climate change.
The Great Barrier Reef, battered but not broken by a warming climate, is inspiring hope and worry alike as researchers race to understand how it can survive.
Authorities are trying to buy the reef time by combining ancient knowledge with new technology. They are studying coral reproduction in hopes to accelerate regrowth and adapt it to handle hotter and rougher seas.
Photo courtesy of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority via AP
Underwater heat waves and cyclones have devastated some of the 3,000 coral reefs making up the Great Barrier Reef..
Researchers have said that climate change is challenging the vibrant marine superstructure and that more destruction is to come.
“This is a clear climate change signal. It’s going to happen again and again,” Lizard Island Research Station director Anne Hoggett said of the continuing damage to the reef from stronger storms and marine heat waves. “It’s going to be a rollercoaster.”
Billions of microscopic animals called polyps have built this breathtaking 2,300km-long colossus that is visible from space and perhaps 1 million years old. It is home to thousands of known plant and animal species and boasts a US$6.4 billion annual tourism industry.
“The corals are the engineers. They build shelter and food for countless animals,” said Mike Emslie, head of the reef’s monitoring program at the Australian Institute for Marine Science.
Emslie’s team have seen disasters get bigger and hit more and more frequently over 37 years of underwater surveys.
Heat waves in recent years drove the loss of countless tiny organisms that power the reefs through photosynthesis, causing branches to lose their color. Without these algae, corals cease growing and can become brittle, providing less for the nearly 9,000 reef-dependent species.
Cyclones in the past dozen years smashed acres of corals. Without time to recover between events, the reef cannot regrow.
However, in the last heat wave, Emslie’s team at AIMS noticed new corals sprouting up faster than expected.
“The reef is not dead,” he said. “It is an amazing, beautiful, complex and remarkable system that has the ability to recover if it gets a chance, and the best way we can give it a chance is by cutting carbon emissions.”
The first step in the government’s reef restoration plan is to better understand the enigmatic life cycle of the coral itself.
For that, dozens of Australian researchers take to the seas across the reef during a spawning event that is the only time each year when coral polyps naturally reproduce as winter warms into spring. In labs, they test ways to increase corals’ reproductive cycle and boost genes that survive higher temperatures.
“Despite recent impacts from climate change, the Great Barrier Reef is still a vast, diverse, beautiful and resilient ecosystem,” scientist David Wachenfeld said.
However, that is today, in a world warmed about 1.1°C.
“As we approach 2°C and certainly as we pass it, we will lose the world’s coral reefs and all the benefits that they give to humanity,” Wachenfeld said.
As home to over 30 percent of marine biodiversity, coral reefs are essential for the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people all over the tropics, he said, adding that the reef is “part of the national identity of Australians and of enormous spiritual and cultural significance for our First Nations people.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to