A race is under way in Florida to rescue corals that are being bleached at alarming rates as a result of this summer’s historic heatwaves and rising water temperatures.
Several factors have accelerated the decline in healthy coral including rising water temperatures and acidity as a result of climate change, in addition to pollution, overfishing, storms and disease.
One of the main reasons behind Florida’s current mass bleaching event – which is usually expected around late August and September – is record temperatures that have been arriving earlier in the year, warming the ocean significantly.
July is incredibly early to be seeing these temperatures on our reefs,” Cynthia Lewis, the director of the Keys Marine Lab at Florida’s Institute of Oceanography, told the Guardian.
A 2022 study found that the Florida Keys, particularly along the southern island coasts, “revealed very strong increasing trends” of marine heatwaves over the years, adding that the detected positive trends and “especially the recent high peaks of MHW events, may enhance the loss of specific heat-sensitive species, damaging the biodiversity of this tropical coastal environment”.
Perhaps most importantly, the coral reef also acts as a buffer to the Florida coastline during storms, an extreme weather event occurring more frequently as another catastrophic result of climate change.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A race is under way in Florida to rescue corals that are being bleached at alarming rates as a result of this summer’s historic heatwaves and rising water temperatures.
Several factors have accelerated the decline in healthy coral including rising water temperatures and acidity as a result of climate change, in addition to pollution, overfishing, storms and disease.
One of the main reasons behind Florida’s current mass bleaching event – which is usually expected around late August and September – is record temperatures that have been arriving earlier in the year, warming the ocean significantly.
July is incredibly early to be seeing these temperatures on our reefs,” Cynthia Lewis, the director of the Keys Marine Lab at Florida’s Institute of Oceanography, told the Guardian.
A 2022 study found that the Florida Keys, particularly along the southern island coasts, “revealed very strong increasing trends” of marine heatwaves over the years, adding that the detected positive trends and “especially the recent high peaks of MHW events, may enhance the loss of specific heat-sensitive species, damaging the biodiversity of this tropical coastal environment”.
Perhaps most importantly, the coral reef also acts as a buffer to the Florida coastline during storms, an extreme weather event occurring more frequently as another catastrophic result of climate change.
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