After the devastating heat waves of the previous year, the coral reefs have fallen off the radar. Now that Earth’s delicate coral reefs can only get better with time, the good news keeps rolling in. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is one of the most robust reefs.
The Great Barrier Reef had a rough year in 2016 due to the devastating effects of marine heat waves, which destroyed and damaged nearly all of the corals. After a year, the coral reefs that remained had become used to the high temperatures and had become more resilient. The consequences of climate change on coral reefs are now being studied. During the 2016 event, all of the vividly coloured corals had been bleached and faded due to the warm waters. It’s possible that 2017’s delayed fading was due to the same variables that led to it in 2016.
In the words of James Cook University’s Terry Hughes, the survivors appear to be of the robust variety. Having this natural selection event take place is quite rare. The current focus of the investigation is on the emergence of ecological memory at the time of the consecutive occurrence of mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017. The fact that the event was caused by climate change and occurred in a specific order is something that should be acknowledged, according to the experts. Ecologists are alarmed about the abrupt impacts of climate change on such sensitive ecosystems. The 7–14 degree Fahrenheit temperature change over the course of two years was seen, but its impact was different since the past incidence on a biological community has a significant impact on its present and future ecological reaction. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is urging humans to take a more active role in conserving the world’s coral reefs after recently discovering that corals take 10 years to recover.
