Coral Reefs Bleaching Worldwide

[Shrimp_Killer]

It is getting depressing.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science...eut/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science....ap/index.html

[grupper]

Well, just so that it's not all depressing news:

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=819474

[Carman34L]

i talked to a friend who lives in australia, he said the GBR only bleached about 1%. he laughed when I told him we were getting reports of mass bleaching. He then told me to not believe the reports if I have not seen the reef with my own eyes.

[Shrimp_Killer]

If you read those articles; they don't say the GBR is bleaching at any percent. It does say that temperatures in certain parts are worse than during the 2002 bleaching. They do say the Carribean has been hit hard -- the worst bleaching on record.

[Shrimp_Killer]

By the way. The GBR article is about NASA's involvment. Those Bush loving ***holes would not get involved if there was not something to start worrying about.


But your right...Global warming is something that those commie loving liberals are just making up.


(Why don't you go buy as much property on the low lying coast as you can find)

[shrug1013]

haha, all bush's fault, haha

[joaquin1119]

they will be ok...there gonna be times when mother earth wants her way..we cant do much about it...next thing u know there gonna be everywhere..you see..

[55semireef]

Alright everyone, explain all the recent hurricans. Whats the cause in that? I know from experience, I live in FLORIDA!

[Dactyl]

this is precisely why there should be a major effort to get many of the corals around the world into captive propagation. at least then there will be frags floating around if some barrier reef at an atoll somewhere completely bites the dust. theyll be able to rebuild it from captive frags.

[daytonians]

Nobody honestly knows why we are in a heavy hurricane cyle or why corals are bleaching.

As for global warming, scientists can't tell me if it will rain tomorrow, so how can they know what going to happen over the next 50 years.

We need way more research.

[kmainzer]

I am a NASA scientist, and global warming isn't something we're making up - believe me, I wish it were. It is heartbreaking. Insulate your house, unplug your TV, do anything you can to reduce your power consumption so that we can save the reefs we love so much. Sorry to disappoint, but the global warming problem isn't going away, isn't a "liberal commie conspiracy", and I really really wish it weren't true, but it is. One of the hardest parts of being a scientist is knowing the truth about how bad things really are, then trying to convince the public to do something. Sometimes I feel like Cassandra - the Greek woman of legend who was doomed to know the future and no one would believe her.

Sadly, the American public has been badly mislead to think that pollution doesn't cause any real harm. There are now, however, literally dozens of independent experiments to confirm that the Earth is warming, from the maple trees in Vermont which now give sap a month earlier than a century ago, to the cherry blossoms in Japan which also flower a month early, to Antartic ice cores, to the bleaching reefs. Read the science journal articles in Science or Nature, folks - not the lame CNN or Fox News articles. Then do something to help!!! I love the reefs (as an aquarist and a diver, as well as a scientist), and I want them to be there forever.

[55semireef]

Originally posted by Shrimp_Killer
By the way. The GBR article is about NASA's involvment. Those Bush loving ***holes would not get involved if there was not something to start worrying about.


But your right...Global warming is something that those commie loving liberals are just making up.


(Why don't you go buy as much property on the low lying coast as you can find)

Can you explain why the temperatures of oceans have risen?
Hurricanes thrive of ocean temperatures of 80 degrees or more. Hurricanes start off the west coast of Africa. Recently as we all know, hurricanes have been bigger and more forceful than ever. I know. I live in Florida.

Before, scientists use to predict that a hurricane 5 would happen every hundred years. Now look how frequent these things are.

Were going to have to make a new scale soon for a 6.

[82SC]

terrible...losing so much great scuba areas

[55semireef]

I am more worried about everything dying. All the great wonders happens in the sea.

[Dactyl]

you know whats a real shame? the corruption in noaa in the florida keys. its a bunch of old crony's protecting their turf and therefore nothing gets done. its funny that theyve been able to repopulate entire harbors in guam with corals and yet the florida keys sits there rotting away and getting worse every year. theres a few projects now but it seems anytime anyone else starts to make any progress the noaa crony's come over and shut it down. they just want to sit on their butts and soak up a paycheck. lump that in with all the other corruption in florida but the sad part is it comes at the expense of the reefs.

the #1 thing that could fix the reef problem is if they actually got funding for the diadema urchin project that scrapes the reefs clean. in the 1980s a disease got in through the panama canal and wiped them out caribbean wide and the populations havent recovered because the larvae have a low survival rate. the reefs in florida and the caribbean would thrive if they got the urchins back to scrub the rock clean so algae wouldnt choke out the corals but they got a WHOPPING $1800 to work on the project.

[55semireef]

What are the old noaa cronys?

[55semireef]

So I take it the urchings help a lot.

[Dactyl]

old noaa scientists who are more interested in the prestige and income of noaa than doing anything about the reefs. and yes ive seen diadema urchins everywhere there are healthy reefs. they are conspicuously absent in unhealthy reefs.

[DrChaos619]

not to get political in a reef tank forum but NEVER trust the news media. Dare I make a pun and say take the news with a grain of salt? I think i will

take the news with a grain of salt

ha ha....hilarious!

But seriously, bleaching is still very present. for example, new scientist mag states that...


"Australia's Great Barrier Reef will lose 95 per cent of its living coral by 2050 - predicts a new report. And this devastating situation will occur if the best-case scenario for global warming unfolds.

However, the damning predictions have sparked debate, with some researchers saying the claims are exaggerated. They do not reflect the current level of uncertainty about either the impact of warmer waters on the Reef, or likely climate change, say critics."

source: New Scientist Magazine (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4707)

whats more ghastly is the current policy in fishing around the GBA..

"At the moment less than 5 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef is protected from fishing. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) wants to increase this area to 25 per cent. An important consideration is to locate marine parks in areas where the coral is resistant to bleaching. If the coral dies, eventually the fish and other marine species will die too."

Source: (http://www.science.org.au/nova/076/076key.htm)

In my experiences, even the most fragile and frail of creatures have a way of bouncing back, but not after the massive loss of the spieces. The next 50 or so years will be interesting to say the least.

Now, why can't we build a large chimney into space! that'd solve all our problems lol.

[Dactyl]

the biggest problem the GBR is having are those damn crown of thorns starfish. theres a population boom and theyre not sure why but theyre poisoning them to fend off the damage.

[daytonians]

"Great Barrier Reef will lose 95 per cent of its living coral by 2050"

Like I said, the experts can't tell us if it will rain tomorrow. There is no way that anybody know what will be going on in 45 years.

Yes the ocean is currently warmer. Nobody knows if the earth is going through a natural warm cycle, or it is a man made problem.

That said, there are many good reasons to concerve energy. I drive a small car, not an SUV. That is just good common sence, whether CO2 is warming the earth or not. Cleaner air, saving fuel, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, the list goes on and on.

[55semireef]

Actually, Earth within the next hundred million years will be getting colder bc its slowly moving away from the sun.
By that time, man is eith extinct or we have colonized other planets.

[thereefgeek]

Doesn't anyone remember the last ice age, or am I just that old?

On a geological scale, changes in climate are a reality. The length of time for which our so-called "scientists" have been tracking global temperature changes is but a blink in the thousands of millenia that our planet has been in existance.

Excuse me if I don't buy into anything CNN reports (read: spoon feeds) to the masses.

[Reefeross]

You know, I saw an interesting program on History Channel. I couldn't catch the entire show, but they were saying that during the Midevil (sp?) years the earth's temp dropped maybe two degrees, dosn't sound like a lot but it caused an insane amount of problems, I think it said it caused the Ireland Potato Famine and influenced the Black Plague. As we now see, things are warming up, earth recovered from this "mini-Ice age" relatively okay, and we know that Earth had a completely tropical climate during the Mezazoic(?) Era, then the Ice Age, then a "normal" temp. For all we know Earth could have a completely natural fluctuation of temperature and climate. As for natural disasters, I belive I recall hearing there were an unusually large amount of hurricanes in the 50's. Don't crucify me for my sources guys and gals, just take this into consideration.

And I am of the opinion that we should do everything in our power to save disappearing species, and now we can even keep "extinct" species alive in captivity, but in all reality, if reefs are going to die out...They are going to die out. Look at their biology, they are very fragile and require VERY specific conditions to thrive, maybe they just aren't flexible enough for nature. Nature was able to wipe out the dinosaurs (lets say that there were other factors besides a meteor) and regardless of common thought, the dinosaurs weren't unfit or uncapable in the least, they were hugely succesful with a reign of millions of years, we will be lucky if we are around that long.

I still say though, we should do what we can. Get involved in frag trading, recycle, buy captive bred, make small donations whenever possible. We may be fighting a losing battle, but at least we are fighting .

[Dactyl]

this has been my argument for getting caribbean corals in captive propagation but theres all sorts of laws against it. i can only hope people have smuggled corals from the caribbean into europe because the reefs are in bad shape here.