Living

The Great Barrier Reef was never dead

It’s the comeback coral.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is “showing signs of recovery,” a new study shows, after massive bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 threatened the world’s largest living structure.

A more mild summer in 2017-18 combined with restoration efforts from scientists and government officials have helped some of the reef show “substantial signs of recovery,” according to a new report from Queensland state government.

The Great Barrier Reef stretches 1,430 miles along the Queensland coastline and is one of the seven wonders of the natural world, as well as a Unesco World Heritage site.

In 2016, bleaching damaged or destroyed 30 percent of the reef’s shallow water coral, a report published in Nature Research Journal said. The research also stressed the full impact of that event has yet to be fully assessed.





Bleaching occurs when the coral gets stressed from poor water quality and rising ocean temperatures. This stress causes it to release a tiny photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae, which live inside the coral’s tissue and remove its vibrant colors. If the stress continues, the releasing zooxanthellae will eventually kill it. But if its environment returns to normal levels, the coral can reabsorb the algae and recover.

“It is important to realize that bleaching occurs in multiple stages, ranging from the equivalent of a mild sunburn to coral mortality,” Sheriden Morris, managing director of The Reef & Rainforest Research Center, said in a statement. “Saxon Reef, for example, suffered some form of bleaching on 47.1 percent of its live coral cover during the 2016 event.”

Morris added media reports of bleaching typically leave out how severe that particular event was and reports of the reef being dead are “blatantly untrue.”





However, it still faces threats from climate change, pollution, natural disasters, destructive fishing and tourism practices and parasitic outbreaks.

“This recovery is always going to be contingent on environmental conditions,” Morris said. “We all know that the reef may suffer further bleaching events as the climate continues to warm, but we have to do everything we possibly can to help protect our Great Barrier Reef.”

In April, the Australian federal government announced a $379 million grant to help the Great Barrier Reef tackle such challenges as climate change, coral-eating starfish and agricultural runoff that ruins the water quality.





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