The harmful bleaching of the world’s corals has grown up to 84% of the reefs Oceanics in the most intense event of its registered type in history, the international initiative for coral reefs (ICRI) announced on Wednesday.
It is the fourth global bleaching event since 1998 and has exceeded the registered between 2014 and 2017, which affected approximately two thirds of the reefs, said ICRI, a coalition of more than 100 governments, non -governmental organizations and others. And it is not clear when the current episode will end, which began in 2023 and is attributed to the heating of the oceans.
“We may never see that the thermal stress caused by bleaching falls below the threshold that triggers a global event,” said Mark Eakin, executive secretary of the International Coral Arrecifes Society and former coral monitoring chief for the United States Oceanic and Atmospheric National Administration (NOAA, for its acronym in English).
“We are seeing something that is completely changing the face of our planet and the ability of our oceans to sustain life and means of subsistence,” he added.
Last year he was the hottest registered on earth, and much of that heat is going to the oceans. The average annual temperature of the sea surface away from the poles beat its record with 20.87 degrees Celsius (69.57 degrees Fahrenheit).
That is lethal for corals, which are key to seafood production, tourism and coastal protection against erosion and storms. Sometimes, coral reefs are called “Selvas del Mar” because they have high levels of biodiversity: almost 25% of all marine species can be found in, over and around them.
The corals obtain their bright colors of the colorful algae that live within them and that are also a source of food. Prolonged heat causes algae to release toxic compounds and corals expel them. There is a white skeleton and the weakened coral runs a greater risk of dying.
The episode is so severe that the NOAA coral reef surveillance program has had to add levels to its bleaching alert scale to cover the growing risk of choral death.
Efforts are being made to protect and restore corals. A Dutch laboratory has worked with coral fragments, including some taken from the coast of Seychelles, to propagate them in a zoo and that can be used one day to repopulate wild rerecifes if necessary. Other projects, including one in Florida, have worked to rescue corals in danger from extreme heat and take care of them until they recover health before returning them to the ocean.
But scientists say it is essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that heat the planet, such as carbon dioxide and methane.
“The best way to protect coral reefs is to address the root cause of climate change. And that means reducing human emissions that come mainly from burning fossil fuels (…) Everything else seems more like a patch than a solution,” said Eakin.
Melanie McField, co -president of the Caribbean Steering Committee for the Global Coral Arrecifes Monitoring Network, a network of scientists that monitor reefs worldwide, said that “people need to really recognize what they are doing. Inaction is the kiss of death for coral reefs.”
The group update comes while the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has aggressively advanced in his second term to boost fossil fuels and reverse renewable energy programs, since, as he says, it is necessary for economic growth.
“We have a government at this time that is working very hard to destroy all these ecosystems (…) eliminating these protections will have devastating consequences,” Eakin said.