Essay On Coral Bleaching

This article relates to science because it is about the coral bleaching at rapid rates and how humans may be behind the problem. Coral bleaching is dangerous because many animals depend on coral reefs and without coral, our ocean ecosystems could be in trouble. “Scientists surveyed 100 coral reef locations in tropical zones around the world, tracking each spot’s fate from 1980 to 2016. At first, only a few of the locations had experienced bleaching. But by 2016, all had been hit by at least one bleaching event, and all but six had suffered a severe event — defined as affecting more than 30 percent of corals in an area.”- (Paragraph Three). As the previous excerpt from the article explains, scientists have seen the amount of bleached areas

Ecosystems and communities could be in jeopardy and that could spell at trouble for the entire planet because we all rely on each other for survival. If all the fish die then humans would have a lot of food and would struggle even more with starvation. “The median time between pairs of severe bleaching events has also decreased, the researchers found — it’s now just under six years, versus 25 to 30 years in the early 1980s. That’s not enough time for corals to fully bounce back before getting hit again.”- (Paragraph Four). Not only is the corals bleaching faster than ever before but the time between rounds of severe bleaching as grown closer and there is severe bleaching more often than ever before. Therefore, the coral doesn’t have time to recover from the bleaching that it has suffered. “Consistently higher tropical water temperatures, the result of climate change, are in part to blame for the increase in bleaching, researchers say. Warm water stresses corals and strips away their symbiotic algae — their main source of food and the reason they’re

The warming water is not only dangerous to the coral but can be threatening to many other crucial parts of ocean ecosystems and the ecological balance. “In the past, major bleaching events were most likely to happen when El Niño brought bands of warmer water to the tropics. But sea surface temperatures in tropical areas are now warmer during today’s La Niña years (when the water is typically cooler) than during El Niño events 40 years ago, says study co author Terry Hughes, a coral researcher at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Because those temperatures continue to rise, “we have a narrowing window of opportunity to save reefs,” he says.’- (Paragraph Six). The patterns of bleaching are changing and the rising ocean temperatures are making it more and more common to see extreme bleaching in the oceans. As the previous excerpt from the article says, our opportunity to save the coral is shrinking as the bleaching grows and becomes more and more common. The time to act is now if we want to save the corals and the ocean