From what's causing it, to what it means for the world at large, and more!
Join me as we explore how The Great Barrier Reef had a massive bleaching event!
The Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of Australia, and is one of the natural
wonders of the world.
It's a place that is protected because of its importance not just to the world, but
to the animals and various other creatures that reside in said reefs.
However, despite many levels of protection, the Great Barrier Reef came under attack very
recently via a mass bleaching event.
In fact, the reef has experienced its third mass coral bleaching event in five years,
according to the scientist carrying out aerial surveys over hundreds of individual reefs.
Now, for those of you who might be confused as to the wording, a "bleaching event" is
NOT what happens when bleach is inserted into the waters of a populated area.
Rather, it's an event where the water that the coral reefs are in reach a much hotter
temperature than the reefs are used to.
Because of this, they die out as they're not prepared for such temperatures.
These events can be very detrimental, and the loss of the reefs can harm a lot of things
depending on the severity of it all.
Prof Terry Hughes told Guardian Australia: “We know this is a mass bleaching event
and it’s a severe one.”
It follows the worst outbreaks of mass bleaching on record killing about half the shallow water
corals on the world’s biggest reef system in 2016 and 2017.
Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University
and one of the world’s leading authorities on bleaching and the Great Barrier Reef, said:
“We know enough now that [the bleaching] is more severe than in 1998 and 2002.
How it sits with 2016 and 2017 we are not sure yet.”
More surveys were done of the area, and the news that was brought out as a result was
not that encouraging.
Dr Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
told Guardian Australia there was a risk that mass bleaching seen along the length of the
Great Barrier Reef in 2020 could mark the start of another global-scale bleaching event.
Tropical coral reefs tend to be at a higher risk of bleaching during times when the Pacific
Ocean is in a phase known as El Niño.
The latest bleaching on the reef has hit during this cycle’s neutral phase.
“The real concern is with this much bleaching without tropical forcing,” Eakin said.
“This may be a sign we’ve now tipped over to near-annual bleaching in many locations.
It’s quite concerning that we are getting this much heat stress across the Great Barrier
Reef in an Enso [El Niño southern oscillation]-neutral year.
What we are seeing on the Great Barrier Reef and potentially elsewhere is really being
driven just by anthropogenic climate change.
If we get another El Niño, the odds are almost 100% that we will see another global bleaching
event.”
Aerial surveys of 1,020 individual reefs completed across the length of the 2,300km marine park
confirmed the bleaching when it was first suspected.
The fact that the bleaching events are going from somewhat random or in El Nino years to
annual is a very bad thing.
Because there is a chance that reefs can recover from bleaching events should the temperature
of the waters go down.
But, if it stays consistent, they'll die before that happens, and with annual bleaching events
possibly coming, that could indeed be the fate of many coral reefs around the world,
not just the Great Barrier Reef.
We noted the bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, those ones affected the Great Barrier
Reef in such a way that half the reefs died from the rise in water temperature.
Eakin said that when severe bleaching causes mass mortality of corals, “those events
take a decade or more for recovery.
We are seeing these events far too frequently”.
Before we dive even deeper into what is going on with the coral reefs and how to stop this
from happening, be sure to like or dislike the video so that we can continue to improve
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Instead of looking right now at why this is happening, let's just into what would happen
if the coral reefs of the world suddenly bleached out in full.
Meaning that they all die from the various bleaching events that may start occurring
annually, shall we?
The death of the coral threatens the area’s tourism industry (speaking solely to the Great
Barrier Reef for now), which employs more than 700,000 people and brings in $5 billion
annually.
So imagine that, a whole tourism area wiped out because of this bleaching event, and $5
billion dollars a year...gone.
Just like that.
And the people who dedicate their lives to maintaining the reefs, studying the reef,
and more have to go and find themselves new jobs.
Doesn't seem right or fair, does it?
Plus, don't forget about the animals.
Coral is the home to many creatures big and small, and technically, Coral are alive.
they don't look it, but they're animals, and because of that, should the Great Barrier
Reef and many other reefs die, they'll essentially be wiping out a whole swathe of creatures
from the planet.
And there's enough of that going on already via the forests and jungles that are being
chopped down or the animals of the world being hunted to extinction.
Now, the reefs could recover on their own, but it would take years, and that's still
a lot of damage that would need to be recovered from that would still cause a lot of people
and animals problems.
So our best option is to straight up just stop this and future bleaching events from
happening.
But whether we can do that is still very much up for debate.
As the planet gains heat from increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, about 90% of that
extra heat is taken up by oceans.
In January, a study of heat down to 2km in depth concluded that 2019 was the warmest
year on record.
That's really bad if you can't tell.
Eakin said ocean heat content data showed the world’s oceans were gaining heat.
“There’s so much heat that has been absorbed in the upper ocean that all the coral reefs
are much closer now to their bleaching threshold.
As result, it’s very easy to tip them over.”
Data from nine days of aerial surveys over the Great Barrier Reef, carried out in mid-March,
are being analyzed and compiled at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
at James Cook University.
Dr Neal Cantin, a senior coral biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science,
said because of the warming of the oceans caused by climate change, “we are already
committed to more frequent and more severe bleaching in the next decade”.
The Paris Agreement hopes to solve this by having countries lessen their carbon emissions
that contribute to the rising temperatures in the world.
It’s a crucial measure for the Great Barrier Reef, as scientists warn that climate change
may stifle the reef’s ability to repair itself.
For as we noted, if the waters cool down, the reef has a chance to heal, but if not?
Then it won't.
Cantin said the Australian Institute of Marine Science would be carrying out monitoring of
sites in the coming months to see which corals had survived this event and how 2020 had impacted
recovery from previous bleaching.
“We need to understand the full extent of significant mortality,” he said.
There is a little hope though despite all the reef death that is going on.
Many areas of the Great Barrier Reef are known to have experienced severe bleaching, likely
killing many corals, but others, including tourist reefs near Cairns and the Whitsundays,
only experienced mild bleaching.
Most offshore reefs in the far north escaped bleaching entirely.
However, even mild bleaching can be detrimental to fixing everything.
“With mild bleaching, the animal survives but growth is slowed and they become more
susceptible to disease,” said Associate Prof Tracy Ainsworth at the University of
New South Wales.
She said mild bleaching can also impact the ability of the corals to spawn which can slow
recovery from impacts.
“We have known for 20 years that probably by about 2020, we would start to see annual
bleaching.”
Eakin added: “Even if the corals don’t die, bleached corals are injured and starving
and they are more susceptible to disease.
They will also reduce their reproductive output in a bleaching year and the year after.”
And as if that wasn't bad enough, a 2019 study found bleaching in 2016 and 2017 had caused
the numbers of new baby corals produced in 2018 to crash by 89%..
In short, if something serious isn't done soon, the corals of the world will be seriously
affected in no time flat.
Which means that we need to talk about...global warming.
Yes, the topic that EVERYONE LOVES to discuss.
Especially since it's a topic that very few people can agre on, and some people don't
even agree that it exists despite the fact that there is plenty of proof noting that
it is.
But, there's no doubt in many people's minds that the atmosphere of the Earth if heating
up because of carbon emissions put up there by humanity via buildings, cars, etc.
While the process is slow, there is a raise in the temperature of the Earth, and when
it comes to temperature, there is such a thing as a "delicate balance".
If things are too cold, they're freeze, and when they're too warm, they'll potentially
melt or boil.
The oceans of the world are warming up and causing the coral reefs to die, and in the
northern regions of the world the polar ice caps are melting.
It's slow, but it is getting more and more noticeable.
With all of these factors, you'd think that people would try and ban together to stop
this.
But the problem is that even while some people are banding together to fix the problem, it's
not an easy problem to fix.
First and foremost, this isn't just a region problem, or even a hemisphere problem, it's
a global problem.
From the tip of Alaska to the bottom point of Africa, from Japan to New York City and
everywhere in between there are tons of items, people, vehicles, buildings and more that
are pouring more and more carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and a whole variety of fossil
fuels into the air, and thus, into the atmosphere.
While this would be ok to a certain extent, as the atmosphere is able to absorb a lot
of things (and both people and animals emit things like Carbon Dioxide and Monoxide naturally)
there is a limit to what it can absorb.
And when that limit is reached the excess bounces back down to Earth.
As noted, the waters of the oceans take what they can, causing the temperature of the oceans
to rise.
But it also raises the natural temperature of the Earth, and many studies have shown
that in the last 100 years there's been an exponential spike in the amount of harmful
gasses we're pushing into the air.
If this is not stopped, our planet is going to be in serious trouble.
But how do we stop such a global problem?
The first step is to admit it's a problem.
Which many people struggle with.
Then, we need to take steps to make this less of a problem.
It'll never not be a problem, there will always be a threat of overuse of substances that
can cause harm to the world, it's just that we're using fuel sources that specifically
harm the planet and we need to fix that.
Steps are being taken by some, we are starting to grow our renewable energy resources via
things like solar polar and wind power.
Solar and electric cars are being made more public and that is definitely helping as cars
are one of the biggest polluters on the planet.
But we can't stop there.
Trains, motorcycles (which are even worse polluters, trust me) planes, and more are
all public enemy number one when it comes to toxic emissions.
Again, things are being done to try and stop this, including magnetic trains and new potential
models of planes, but we have to keep going.
There's also some sciences that could be used to try and fix things, especially for the
coral reefs.
Imagine if we were able to quarantine an area of the ocean and implement ways to cool down
the water in that area so that the coral could heal?
Yeah, that would be a game-changer, wouldn't it, and it might not be as sci-fi as you're
likely thinking it is.
Global Warming is a threat to the world, and between the polar ice caps melting and raising
the ocean levels and the bleaching events that are causing the coral reefs to die, there
are plenty of instances around the world that this is real and that we need to do something
about it.
Just in regards to the coral reefs, if we lose them in even a small way we're depriving
the world of one of its true natural beauties, and disrupting a major aquatic ecosystem to
boot.
These bleaching events will continue as long as the world keeps getting warmer, and thus,
we need to take steps to make that happen.
Else it will be too late to save anything.
Thanks for watching everyone!
What did you think of this look at the bleaching events of the coral reef and what we need
to do to prevent them?
Do you think we can save the coral reefs from destruction?
Or do you feel that it's too little too late?
Let me know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on
the channel!