Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
I thought the latest on so-called acidification (less basicifation) of the sea was that corals are fine?
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I'm hearing, around 33% of photopic-zone corral lost already, and all of it, once some specific sea surface temperature is reached.
The polyps initially bleach, then die.
A tremendous amount of the world's shallow coastal fisheries depend on the reefs for habitat, but they are extremely sensitive to heat.
Biologists ARE attempting to grow more heat-tolerant varieties of corral. It's a work in progress.
And there ARE corrals which exist at deeper depths, where there's less light. I don't know if they can survive in warmer, brighter, more shallow water.
If scuba-diving the Great Barrier Reef is on your bucket list, you may not want to wait too long.
From: PBS' Climate Change: The Facts',
1/3rd of corrals have experienced bleaching/death, warned about in 1988.
Also, the dust storms which blow across the Atlantic Ocean from the Sahel, while GOOD for the Amazon Basin, KILL corrals in the Caribbean Sea. As oceans continue to warm ( they've already warmed 1/2-degree Celsius ( 0.9-degree F ), they'll feed additional heat energy into the atmosphere, likely amplifying wind energy as well as water vapor ( the Indian Ocean has warmed the most, killing over a thousand since June in Pakistan, destroying 1/3 of homes, and 1/3rd of population now refugees, with no water, food or shelter ), a 'hoax' according to Rex Tillerson, ' a money-making industry.'