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.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
OPTIONS: Asked if one potential avenue to a third term was having J.D. Vance run for the top job and then pass the baton to him, Trump said: ‘That’s one,’ among others US President Donald Trump on Sunday that “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029. “There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News from Mar-a-Lago, his private club. He elaborated later to reporters on Air Force One from Florida to Washington that “I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term
RSS