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Great Barrier Reef Has Worst Coral Die-Off Ever, Report Finds (usatoday.com)
Australia's Great Barrier Reef has suffered from its worst coral die-off ever recorded, according to a new study from the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies based at James Cook University. "Stress from the unusually warm ocean water heated by man-made climate change and the natural El Nino climate pattern caused the die-off," reports USA Today. At more than 1,400 miles long, Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef and the planet's biggest structure made by living organisms. In the northernmost section of the reef, which had been considered the most "pristine," some 67% of the coral died. The good news, scientists said, was that central and southern sections of the reef fared far better, with "only" 6% and 1% of the coral dead, respectively. Coral reefs result from the work of little polyps, creatures only a few millimeters long, budded on top of one another. Over centuries, the shells of these creatures combine to form the exotic shapes of coral reefs. Tiny differences in the anatomy of each polyp species affect the shape of their shells and produce the exotic shapes of each reef. The vibrant colors that draw thousands of tourists to the Great Barrier Reef each year come from algae that live in the corals tissue. When water temperatures become too high, coral becomes stressed and expels the algae, which leave the coral a bleached white color. Mass coral bleaching is a new phenomenon and was never observed before the 1980s as global warming ramped up. Besides their beauty, reefs shelter land from storms, and are also a habitat for myriads of species.
Disclaimer: I'm a physicist at James Cook University, where this study was published. My mother used to work at AIMS 20 years ago, my sister works for CSIRO in marine research, and my cousin-in-law is currently the Coral Reef ARC's COO.
These are results published by the Australian Research Council Centre for Coral Reef Studies. Prof. Terry Hughes, who runs this centre at JCU, has basically surrounding himself with like-minded people. The self-citation rate for articles published by the centre is remarkably high, and I quite frankly don't trust Prof. Hughes to do unbiased research, or to critically analyse his own work. There is a pretty strong monoculture of reef research, and I believe it's a pretty serious problem. One of my physics lecturers wrote a rebuttal letter to Prof Hughes that was leaked to the press, and was disciplined for it (one more strike and he's fired). I would really like to see a little more diversity in the people that study this topic.
That said, I have no reason to doubt the truth of this study. The die-off is real, and is unprecedented in modern times, and elementary physics tells us that increased temperatures due to climate change can only make it worse, not better. My mum's old boss from AIMS, Charlie Veron said in a seminar 10 years ago that the reef is probably doomed, and that even if we manage to stop all CO2 today, there's enough inertia that very little of the reef will survive.