'Huge Wake Up Call': Third of Central, Northern Great Barrier Reef Corals Dead (smh.com.au)

iONiUM quotes a report from The Sydney Morning Herald: More than one-third of the coral reefs of the central and northern regions of the Great Barrier Reef have died in the huge bleaching event earlier this year, Queensland researchers said. Corals to the north of Cairns -- covering about two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef -- were found to have an average mortality rate of 35 percent, rising to more than half in areas around Cooktown. Bleaching occurs when abnormal conditions, such as warm seas, cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae. Corals turn white without these algae and may die if the zooxanthellae do not recolonize them. "It is fair to say we were all caught by surprise," Professor Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said. "It's a huge wake up call because we all thought that coral bleaching was something that happened in the Pacific or the Caribbean which are closer to the epicenter of El Nino events." The report says, "The northern end of the Great Barrier Reef was home to many 50- to 100-year-old corals that had died and may struggle to rebuild before future El Ninos push tolerance beyond thresholds."

Comments

Re: News FLASH

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if joke or you're ignorant of the fact that corals are actually animals and not rocks.

GM coral

[ShanghaiBill]

Some corals tolerate heat much better than others. We should identify the genes that make that possible, and clone them into other coral species. Some research is being done.

Re:GM coral

[sl149q]

For a slightly more balanced view on this see here: https://judithcurry.com/2016/0...

One of the reasons that coral can adapt quickly is that their symbionts adapt quickly.

From the above reference "Although coral genomes may evolve slowly, their symbionts have extremely fast generation times, averaging every 7 days. Furthermore the symbiont community consists of hundreds of symbionts that have already adapted to a wide variety of temperature, irradiance and salinity variables within different microclimates over the past million years. Symbiont shuffling and shifting is an evolutionary masterpiece that circumvents plodding evolutionary mechanisms of most organisms with long generation times and enables immediate adaptation.

A good summary statement is provided by Baker et al. “flexibility in coral–algal symbiosis is likely to be a principal factor underlying the evolutionary success of these organisms”.
"

Re:GM coral

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing Judith Curry says is balanced.
She's a professional apologist and skeptic for deniers, who keeps her head firmly in the sand and tries to explain how warming temperatures aren't actually warming temperatures. She barely escapes being an outright denier herself, by taking the "we need to know more" stance instead of "its not happening" stance.

That's a known issue

[no-body]

So:

- why is it happening?
- why are the individuals/groups pulling the strings and the press allowing this to happen without yelling and screaming?
(are the "protesters" considered lunatics?)
Maybe dreamland: nothing happens to us, we can afford it... elysium-style
Or - afraid of taking risks to go outside the "normal", loosing the comfort zone
- does not concern me
- too busy making ends meet ...

It's really bad - one just can wonder what's causing it in human brains to let this happen.
I recently met a guy: global warming does not exist and a huge waterfall of words arguing for why this is the case, impossible to even touch the subject - extremely determined.
I just classify it as religious believe system - no real proof, continuous repetition burns the PROM and it runs forever, if you touch it, it may explode.

Re:Australia had the UNESCO report censored.

[Layzej]

UNESCO had drawn up a list of world heritage sites that were in danger from climate change, and Australia had the reefs removed because it would hurt tourism.

To top it off, Australia has just gutted the research arm that studies this.

See no evil. Hear no evil.

Re:Australia had the UNESCO report censored.

[aXis100]

It's just appalling.

To further highlight the farce, 3 months ago the Australian environment minister Greg Hunt was awarded "Best Minister in the World".

Meanwhile under his watch we've:
- Abolished the Carbon Tax
- Increased our Carbon emmissions
- Approved the biggest coal mine in the country
- Approved additional dredging to allow for increased coal exports
- Passed legislation to prevent environmentalists from legally challenging his rulings.
- Did nothing whilst big chunks of the Great Barrier Reef died.
- Called out the opposition leader on not offering support for communities that depend of reef tourism. I mean, WTF??

Re:Australia had the UNESCO report censored.

[Clifton Beach]

And then instead of being ashamed about getting references to the reef removed from the UN's report on climate change, Australia's (Anti) Environment minister then gloated about it on Twitter:

"Under Labor the U.N. put the Great Barrier Reef on the In-Danger 'Watch list'...Thanks to the coalition it came off"

I wish this was satire but unfortunately it's not.

Re:Australia had the UNESCO report censored.

[aXis100]

Hmm, is that why the Australia government quietly released a report on Christmas eve 2015 showing a 1% increase. I'm sure they were hoping no-one was watching.

http://www.theguardian.com/aus...