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- Caribbean coral reefs are dying
Caribbean coral reefs are dying
USA, Bermuda, Belize, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica
last update:
4 months agoProblems
Loss of reefs
These beautiful coral reefs are in serious trouble. They are being damaged or destroyed by pollution, disease, climate change, and a large number of ship groundings. Staghorn and elkhorn coral have become threatened species. These corals are the building blocks of reefs in the Caribbean and the Florida Keys. Caribbean coral reef decline began in the 1950s and 1960s from local human activities, climate change, pollution, overfishing, and degradation. The decline of the reefs has been rapid: in the 1970s, more than 50% showed live coral cover, compared with 8% in the newly completed survey. The scientists who carried it out warned there was no sign of the rate of coral death slowing. The loss of reefs is also a serious economic problem in the Caribbean, where large populations depend on fishing and tourism. Coral reefs provide a vital home for marine creatures, acting as a nursery for fish and a food resource for higher food chain predators such as sharks and whales. Warming seas owing to climate change can lead to coral being "bleached" – a state where the tiny polyps that build the reefs die off. The US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts increasing frequency and severity of mass bleaching events as global warming takes effect.
Solutions
Restoring Coral Reefs
Author: NOAA
To address these issues, NOAA and its partners started a coral restoration effort. Using innovative techniques, like underwater coral farming and reattaching broken coral pieces, these projects transplant and restore thousands of coral colonies on damaged reef sites. Trained scuba divers are given special permission to work on the reefs. These divers transplant the new pieces of coral by using cement or epoxy putty. The goal is to restore the coral reef to allow the natural inhabitants a chance to thrive. Scientists have found that the corals grown in the nurseries are able to reproduce in their new homes. This means staghorn and elkhorn have a chance for a comeback. It also means genetic diversity may be achieved along the reefs – allowing for stronger and more resilient ecosystems in our ocean. Since healthy coral is a vital part of the ocean environment, restoring reefs brings great benefits to the waters here and around the world.
Gallery
5
Timelines
2020
The climate crisis is currently considered the greatest threat to the world’s reefs, and 14 percent of them were lost because of it between 2009 and 2018 alone. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius beyond pre-industrial levels would still see 70 to 90 percent of tropical reefs wiped out.
2010
An extreme ocean warming event in 2010 placed Caribbean coral reefs under severe stress resulting in widespread coral bleaching and threatening the livelihoods that rely on them. Mass coral bleaching is one of the major threats to coral reef ecosystems exacerbating coral reef decline in the Caribbean region . Often mass coral bleaching events are as a result of the prolonged exposure of corals to unusually warm ocean temperatures, resulting in the expulsion of symbiotic algae from host corals. However, not all coral taxa are equally susceptible to bleaching. Some taxa may bleach, whereas others exposed to the same heat stress may not bleach or show intermediate signs of bleaching.
2005
The warmest year since temperature records began in 1880, 2005 witnessed massive coral losses through severe bleaching, up to 95 percent in several islands including the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Cuba, and the French West Indies. There were also 26 named storms, including 13 hurricanes, that year.
2000
The greatest overall changes in coral and macroalgal cover occurred between 1984 and 1998, after which there was little overall change at the great majority of locations except for places most strongly affected by the extreme warming events of 2005 and 2010.
1990
However, increases in stress‐tolerant and weedy corals have slowed or reversed since the 1980s and 1990s in tandem with intensified coral bleaching and disease. These patterns reveal the long history of increasingly stressful environmental conditions on Caribbean reefs that began with widespread local human disturbances and have recently culminated in the combined effects of local and global change.
1980
This phase shift followed disease outbreaks that killed en masse the Acropora corals and the sea urchin Diadema antillarum in the early 1980s as well as coral bleaching outbreaks that became widespread in the late 1980s. The appearance and intensification of coral disease and bleaching epidemics in the Caribbean and elsewhere have been linked to elevated sea surface temperatures from global climate change, algal overgrowth from overexploitation of herbivorous reef fishes and increases in land-based runoff.
1970
Since systematic reef monitoring began in the 1970s, researchers have documented a dramatic ‘phase shift’ on Caribbean reefs whereby habitats previously dominated by reef-building corals (in many locations, primarily branching corals from the Acropora genus) are now dominated by macroalgae and low-relief corals tolerant of lower water quality (higher turbidity and nutrient) conditions.
1950
The iconic elkhorn and staghorn corals that once dominated Caribbean reefs first began declining in the 1950s and 1960s, earlier than previously thought. This timing is decades before climate change impacts, indicating that local human impacts like fishing and land-clearing set the stage for the widespread coral declines that are now accelerating in response to warming oceans.