Losing Nemo? Wider effects of mass Great Barrier Reef bleaching emerge

Marian Wong, a marine
biologist at the University
of Wollongong, at
Lizard Island.

Bleaching in the world's reefs over the past couple of years is immediately evident from the stark images of corals shedding their myriad colours for a ghostly white.

While as much as half the corals of the Great Barrier Reef died during the marine heatwaves of 2016 and 2017, researchers are only now beginning to assess the toll on the many species that rely on corals for food and shelter.

"A lot of the attention is on the corals," Marian Wong, a marine biologist from the University of Wollongong, said. "The public's perception is that the fish are mobile enough to just swim away.”

Read Peter Hannam’s story from The Age - “Losing Nemo? Wider effects of mass Great Barrier Reef bleaching emerge.”

Petition: Matthew Guy, get serious on climate change.

In 2017, the world witnessed concerning climate change impacts, from record-breaking hurricanes and wildfire in the United States to bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

Closer to home we're seen parts of Victoria experienced the driest conditions on record and the state has faced a heightened bushfire risk in summer. 

It’s time for Matthew Guy and the Victorian Liberal and
National party to get serious about climate change.

Unchecked climate change exposes Victorian families and regional communities to intensifying heatwaves, bushfires, droughts, and extreme weather. These climate impacts threaten public health, infrastructure, and agricultural production.

Communities across the state are now taking action. Victorians are reining in emissions by getting energy efficient and installing solar. Others are working on projects to prepare their local communities from climate impacts that are now unavoidable.

Read the Friends of the Earth story - “Petition: Matthew Guy, get serious on climate change.”

Coral bleaching badly affected reefs of Kimberley, study finds

Up to 80% of coral in inshore reefs in the Kimberley was bleached during the global mass bleaching event that also affected 93% of the Great Barrier Reef in the summer of 2016-2016, according to new research.

Up to 80% of corals in inshore reefs in the Kimberley
were bleached in the 2016 El Niño heatwave. 

Led by scientists from the University of Western Australia and published in Scientific Reports this week, the research found between 57% and 80% of corals in the Kimberley, particularly at Montgomery Reef, the largest inshore coral reef in Australia, were bleached in April 2016.

About 29% of the coral at Rottnest, off the coast of Perth, was also bleached during the 2015-2016 summer. The world heritage listed Ningaloo reef and a reef further south, at Bremer Bay, were not affected.

It is the first time the Kimberley’s famously tough inshore coral reefs have been affected by a mass bleaching event and the first time a reef along the Western Australian coastline has been severely affected by a bleaching event triggered by an El Niño heatwave.

Read Calla Wahlquist’s story on The Guardian - “Coral bleaching badly affected reefs of Kimberley, study finds.”

We must act immediately to save the Great Barrier Reef

And so it begins: the end of days. The Great Barrier Reef is bleaching for the second year in a row and now, according to the results of helicopter surveys released on Monday, it is the middle part (all 300 miles-plus of it) that is suffering the awful reef stress that comes courtesy of a warming ocean.

‘Coral bleaching is incredibly serious, but reefs
can recover. There is reason for hope, therefore.
 Hope, but not complacency.’ 

Coral bleaching is incredibly serious. In especially warm summers, the complex balance between the symbiotic algae and the coral becomes disrupted. To save themselves, the coral expels the algae in the hope of better times ahead. In this state, the coral becomes whitened. That’s what bleaching is.

Without the algae to synthesise most of its energy, the coral operates on a kind of “standby” mode. It is vulnerable in this state. Only one third of the entire Great Barrier Reef remains unbleached. The bell, it seems, is tolling for one of the most biologically active parts of planet Earth.

I watched this Great Barrier Reef story unfold, and what started out as quite a conservative bit of science reporting quickly morphed into something else. By midday, many news outlets started running with the line that the Great Barrier Reef was now in a “terminal stage” – a phrase used by one (understandably frustrated) expert in the Guardian’s coverage of the story and recycled into all sorts of other online reports, which then did loops on Twitter.

Read Jule Howard’s story on The Guardian - “We must act immediately to save the Great Barrier Reef.”

‘Huge blow': Back-to-back bleaching covers two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef

Unprecedented back-to-back annual coral bleaching events have affected two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef, with this year's event already leading to mortality of half the corals in some key tourist tracts, scientists say.

The aerial survey plotted the health of 
some 800 reefs over 8000 km of flying. 

Record-breaking warm waters along the Queensland coast has triggered widespread bleaching over 1500 kilometres of the World-Heritage-listed reef over the two summers, said Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

Professor Hughes and his team completed aerial surveys last Wednesday after scoring about 800 separate reefs. The 8000km journey closely followed the path of the 2016 survey that found the northern regions of the Great Barrier Reef most affected.

This year, the worst of the bleaching is further south in the popular tourist sector between Townsville and Cairns. (See map below.)

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘Huge blow': Back-to-back bleaching covers two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef.”