Great Barrier Reef hit by ‘bleaching’
Print Edition
AERIAL surveys of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have revealed the worst bleaching on record in the icon’s pristine north, scientists said yesterday, with few corals escaping damage.
Researchers said the view was devastating after surveying about 520 reefs via plane and helicopter between Cairns and the Torres Strait in the north of Queensland state.
“This will change the Great Barrier Reef for ever,” Terry Hughes, an expert on coral reefs from James Cook University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“We’re seeing huge levels of bleaching in the northern thousand kilometer stretch of the Great Barrier Reef.”
Just over a week ago, the Australian government said that bleaching at the World Heritage-listed site was “severe” but added that the southern area had escaped the worst.
Bleaching occurs when abnormal environmental conditions, such as warmer sea temperatures, cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, draining them of their color.
Hughes, convener of Australia’s National Coral Bleaching Taskforce, said in a statement that the southern reef had “dodged a bullet due to cloudy weather that cooled the water temperatures down.”
But in the far north, almost without exception, every reef showed consistently high levels of bleaching, he said.
“We flew for 4,000km in the most pristine parts ... and saw only four reefs that had no bleaching,” he said.
“The severity is much greater than in earlier bleaching events in 2002 or 1998.”
Fellow James Cook University expert James Kerry said more surveys would follow, but the damage in the north was severe, often falling into the highest category of level four, meaning 60 percent of the coral was bleached.
The researchers said it was too early to know how many corals would die, given that they can recover if the water temperature drops and the algae recolonize them. But Kerry said abnormally high temperatures were set to continue in the northern reaches of the reef for another week.
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