Pacific reef systems could continue being hammered into 2017

Transcript

Climate scientists following the longest ever global coral bleaching phenomena in history say reef systems could continue being hammered into 2017.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the current event which started in mid 2014 is being prolonged by Global warming and ongoing intense El Niño conditions.

NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Coordinator Mark Eakin is one of a bevy of leading ocean scientists gathered in New Orleans this week to discuss the state of the worlds oceans.

He spoke with Koroi Hawkins

MARK EAKIN: First, not all corals die when they bleach, sometimes they do recover but the chances of a coral bleaching, then recovering, and then bleaching again and recovering the next year starts to drop. And also the reefs, some of the coral will survive the first event, and then if they get hit the next year, and then maybe another year, you're going to lose more and more corals off that reef. So, yeah, this is just prolonging the sort of severe stress that the coral normally see during one of these bleaching events.

KOROI HAWKINS: And what does that mean for the rest of the ecosystem if coral reefs are so severely impacted in this way across a large part of our oceans?

ME: The coral itself serves as a habitat, it serves as a major source of food, of production activity within the coral reef, and so when you have this sort of massive mortality of coral, and especially as it spreads and gets more and more severe you're going to be losing habitat space for fish, you're going to be losing food to drive the food chain, you're going to be really having a major impact on an important ecosystem that a lot of people are dependent on.

KH: And what is the call on authorities or to people who are able to do something about? Is there anything that can be done and are they listening?

ME: Well there are a few things that can be done and fortunately people are listening as they hear about events like this going on. First of all, clearly a lot was heard if you look at what happened in Paris at the COP21. The basic problem here is the rising temperatures and there has been a major move for a variety of reasons, not just for corals, to really put a cap on the amount of warming we're going to allow the earth to experience - holding it to two degrees warming and in the long run even keeping it back down to one-and-a-half degrees of warming, and that's huge for coral reefs. But on a local level what can also be done is just provide opportunities either to reduce other local stressers that may be contributing to declines in the health of the coral, or by monitoring things to see which reefs are more resilient than others during events like this, being able to provide better protection for those reefs that have a better chance of surviving this event. If we don't, you know, we're just not going to have reefs around much longer.