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.”
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