When you buy through links in our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn commission. Large colonies of rock star coral and symmetrical brain coral cover the coral reefs of Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. | Credit: GP Schmahl/NOAA Coral Reef Awareness Week took place around the world the week of July 15… Read More »
St. in the US Virgin Islands. A sea cucumber on the sandy ocean bottom off St. Croix. NOAA, CC BY-ND My Georgia Tech colleague Mark Hay recently published a study showing that removing sea cucumbers from reef communities led to an increase in organic waste material and a 15-fold increase in coral mortality. Protecting sea… Read More »
The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest reef system, “one of the richest and most complex natural ecosystems on Earth”, is once again undergoing a new transformation mass coral bleaching incident. This incident, the fifth in less than a decade, appears to be the result of heat stress following a record year for global temperatures,… Read More »
The Southern Great Barrier Reef is suffering from massive coral bleaching due to heat stress, reef managers said on Wednesday, raising fears that a seventh mass bleaching event could occur in this vast and ecologically important area. Aerial surveys carried out last weekend by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute… Read More »
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg was only 10 years old when he first saw the Great Barrier Reef. That year, 1969, most young children around the world were inspired by NASA’s mission to send astronauts to the moon. But according to Hoegh-Guldberg, the fine gray dust of the lunar surface had nothing in the other world beneath the… Read More »