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CoralReefWatch's Mark Eakin Interviewed
on Coral Bleaching By Scientific American
26 January 2015 - NOAA Coral Reef Watch's
(CRW) Coordinator, Dr. C. Mark Eakin was interviewed by Scientific
American for a piece entitled, "Coral Reefs Show Remarkable Ability to
Recover from Near Death". The article discussed a new study by Nicholas
Graham (a coral researcher at James Cook University in Australia) and
others, published this week in Nature, revealing that some corals can
bounce back from near death experiences, such as the severe bleaching
witnessed in many parts of the Pacific as well as the Florida Keys in
2014.
The Nature study indicated that of 21 reefs monitored off two
central Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean since the major global
bleaching event of 1998, 12 reefs (with a >90% loss of live coral cover)
were able to recover to their pre-disturbance state. Nine other reefs
were largely destroyed and underwent a shift to dominance by fleshy
macroalgae. Recovery from the severe climate-induced bleaching event was
favored when a reef was structurally complex and in deeper water, when
the density of juvenile corals and herbivorous fishes was relatively
high, and when nutrient loads were low. The study's findings foreshadow
the likely divergent but predictable outcomes for reef ecosystems in
response to climate change. For the Scientific American article, Dr.
Eakin was asked not only to give remarks about the new Nature study, but
also to discuss the severe coral bleaching events in the Pacific in
2014; the current thermal stress Outlook (February-May 2015) for coral
reefs in the Pacific and Indian Oceans; and the potential for coral reef
ecosystems to survive in the face of ongoing climate-induced warming and
acidification of the world's oceans.
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