Coral Bleaching

Have you ever wanted to take a nice long trip to the Bahamas to enjoy the sand at your feet and try scuba diving for a first time or maybe just for fun? What do you anticipate to see and hope to encounter when you scuba dive in those oceans? Maybe, abundances of fish surrounded by beautiful coral they inhabit to sustain their everyday lives that we hope to see and influence our lives to their graceful biotic system. The sad truth is that Coral reefs around the world have been severely damaged by unusually warm ocean temperatures. What happens if coral reefs slowly die off because of these increases in temperature, who, what would it impact? Coral reefs are extremely important for biodiversity, providing a home to over 25% of all marine life. Twenty-five percent, that’s a whole lot of fish that’ll just vanish and never come back again. It not only hurts their ecosystem but, it’ll impact even our lives. They provide nurseries for many species of commercially important fish. Children will grow up and not know or experience these marine lives unless they open a book or webpage to look up and see what there once was around our oceans. They are also vital for people and business. What’s the major cause of this coral die off? Climate change is the culprit, and one of the most visually dramatic effects of climate change on corals has been bleaching. When the ocean warms, the oxygen content reduces, and corals become bleached. The heat affects the tiny algae which live symbiotically inside the corals and supply them with food. The heat stress damages the algae and in consequence leads to coral death. Global warming could now mean a death sentence for many coral reefs. If the present rate of destruction continues, most of the world's coral reefs could be killed within our lifetime. Our only real hope of rescuing the coral reefs from the damaging effects of climate change depends on limiting the temperature increase by the end of this century to less than 2°C.