Have you ever tried snorkeling or scuba diving around coral reefs? I did that several times when I was younger and loved it. The beauty is almost indescribable.
Losing these reefs – as now seems all but unavoidable – is a tragedy in so many ways. It crushes biodiversity, threatens to disrupt the ocean food chain, and leaves us bereft of some of nature's most glorious wonders.
For the fifth time in just the past eight summers – 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, and now 2024 – huge swathes of the Great Barrier Reef are experiencing extreme heat stress that has triggered yet another episode of mass coral bleaching.
The most conspicuous impact of unusually high temperatures on tropical and subtropical reefs is wide-scale coral bleaching and death. Sharp spikes in temperature can destroy coral tissue directly even before bleaching unfolds. Consequently, if temperatures exceed 2°C above the normal summer maximum, heat-sensitive corals die very quickly.
Given the near-record levels of heat stress this summer, we can expect heavy losses of corals to occur on hundreds of individual reefs over the next few months.
This latest, still-unfolding event was entirely predictable, as ocean temperatures continue to rise due to global heating.
The only long-term way to protect corals on the Great Barrier Reef and elsewhere is to rapidly reduce global greenhouse emissions.
