Asia's corals hit by mass die-out
Coral reefs in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean are dying from the
worst bleaching effect in more than a decade, Australian marine
scientists said Tuesday.
Coral reefs off the Sumatran Island of Pulau Weh, Indonesia
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The bleaching, triggered by a large pool of warm water which swept
into the Indian Ocean in May, has caused corals from Indonesia to the
Seychelles to whiten and die, Australia's Centre of Excellence for Coral
Reef Studies said.
Reefs in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and
Singapore were also affected by the phenomenon under which sea
temperatures rose by several degrees Celsius in Indonesia, researcher
Andrew Baird said.
"It is certainly the worst coral die-off we have seen since 1998. It
may prove to be the worst such event known to science," he said.
Baird, a fellow at James Cook University, said the magnitude of the
event was so large, and the ocean temperatures in some places raised so
much higher than normal, that it was "almost certainly a consequence of
global warming".
He said for six to eight weeks from mid-May the temperatures were
high enough to cause bleaching of the corals in Indonesia's Aceh, the
area worst hit by the event.
"You jump into the water and you are just surrounded by white and
dead corals," he said. "It is an extraordinary sight. The locals tell us
they have seen nothing like this before."
Baird said the massive die-off was expected to compare in scale and
magnitude to the damage caused in 1998, when warmer water bleached reefs
globally and about 16 percent were seriously degraded.
"This is the second big global bleaching event that we have
documented," he told AFP.
"The scale of the event is so large that it is going to take reefs a
long time to recover," he added. AFP
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