Climate change underwater
Ever since Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, the polar bear (stranded on a tiny piece of ice) has become the unofficial symbol of global warming. But climate change doesn’t just hurt the world above water—it also affects what’s happening down below, something marine ecologists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, James Cook University, and Syiah Kuala University have recently found.
Because of a harsh temperature rise in Indonesian waters, there has been a large scale coral bleaching that may not grow back. Coral bleaching occurs when the algae that live in the coral tissues die. Over time the bleached coral may recover, however, this area doesn’t look so promising: The bleaching in Aceh (an Indonesian province) is an indication of temperature stress in the Andaman Sea. In late May, the temperature of the water reached 34 degrees Celsius, which is 4 degrees higher than average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Hotspots website.
Since 2005, The WCS and JCU have been working to helping to recover the coral reefs that were destroyed in the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, the temperature rise is causing their efforts to be undermined: Scientists who have studied the reefs found that 80 percent of some species have died since the initial assessment in May, making this one of the most deadly coral bleaching ever recorded.
-Angela, KIWI intern
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