Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – the Australian ABC reports scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science are surprised how rapidly the Australian Great Barrier Reef is recovering from the 2016 bleaching event.
Great Barrier Reef starts to recover after severe coral bleaching, survey of sites between Cairns and Townsville shows
By David Chen
Updated Fri at 3:41pm
…
Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science this month surveyed 14 coral reefs between Cairns and Townsville to see how they fared after being bleached.
The institute’s Neil Cantin said they were surprised to find the coral had already started to reproduce.
“We’re finding corals that are showing early signs of reproductive development, really visible eggs that we can see under the naked eye,” Dr Cantin said.
“[It’s] very surprising as previous studies have shown a two-to-three year delay in reproductive activity following bleaching events.
“It means they have enough energy, they’ve recovered the zooxanthellae and the symbiosis and they even have energy to invest in reproduction and egg development.”
…
This is a very different narrative to last year;
Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching at 95 per cent in northern section, aerial survey reveals
7.30 By Peter McCutcheon
Updated 28 Mar 2016, 9:12pm
An aerial survey of the northern Great Barrier Reef has shown that 95 per cent of the reefs are now severely bleached — far worse than previously thought.
Professor Terry Hughes, a coral reef expert based at James Cook University in Townsville who led the survey team, said the situation is now critical.
“This will change the Great Barrier Reef forever,” Professor Hughes told 7.30.
“We’re seeing huge levels of bleaching in the northern thousand-kilometre stretch of the Great Barrier Reef.”
Of the 520 reefs he surveyed, only four showed no evidence of bleaching.
From Cairns to the Torres Strait, the once colourful ribbons of reef are a ghostly white.
“It’s too early to tell precisely how many of the bleached coral will die, but judging from the extreme level even the most robust corals are snow white, I’d expect to see about half of those corals die in the coming month or so,” Professor Hughes said.
…
“There’s good and bad news — the bottom three quarters of the reef is in strong condition,” he said at the time.
…
“Nonetheless we’re looking at 10-year recovery period, so this is a very severe blow.”
…
Who could have imagined that an organism which survived hundreds of millions of years of mass extinction events, and thrived during the warm Holocene Optimum would demonstrate noteworthy recovery capabilities?
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Coral reefs and polar bears… both are tough customers in their own ways.
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/features/lunch-arrives-on-wrangel-island-and-230-polar-bears-show-up-for-the-feast/
Wow, the “lovely and cute polar bears” can also be quite different. Just like an Asian lion, which I had recently visited in the zoo and threw himself against the glass panes with his entire length of almost three meters, screaming that the glass rattled. A real King of the Animals. Predators are just predators and no cuddly animals.
I think I’ll leave Wrangel Island off my list of places to visit…
It’s Walt Disney’s fault. link
Welsh rugbyman Scott Baldwin got a reminder about how real lions are not big kittens, yesterday.https://www.rt.com/sport/405141-rugby-scott-baldwin-lion-bite/
Well worth watching the vid:
https://twitter.com/_/status/913879469798166528
@Greg “petting the lion like it’s a pet cat” – yeah, that’s about what my cat does, too.
It still leaves the big question unanswered. Will the ‘Coral Reef Scientists’ rise from the brain dead?
There’s good and bad news — they may be brain dead, but the bottom three quarters of these coral reef scientists are in strong condition. So, we may be looking at a 10-year recovery period for most of them. /sarc
Their lack of resiliency due to the high level of grants from the UN, environmentalist scam artists, and AGW sycophants make it hard to believe we’ll see much recovery here. lol
From the ABC cataclysmic bleaching event article:
“We have coral cores that provide 400 years of annual growth,” explains Dr Neal Cantin from the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
“We don’t see the signatures of bleaching in reduced growth following a bleaching event until the recent 1998/2000 events.”
When did the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ end? 1100 AD? 400 years is a convenient number…although I find it very hard to believe that the first bleaching event to be recorded in 400 years was during the Super El Nino of 97-98. I trust these experts as far as I can throw them…there’s too much money to be made perpetuating their propaganda.
Corals can even tolerate temperature differences of more than 2 degrees in a short distance. I think that the “coral bleaching” hyphenated by the climate alarmists is nothing but an adaptation to higher temperatures.
Here one tries to cross two subspecies, which live in two degrees Celsius different water. But I think this is unnecessary. Nature has finally demonstrated the survival ability over millions of years:
http://sciencev2.orf.at/stories/1760156/index.html
http://www.ingenieur.de/Themen/Klima-Umwelt/Korallen-verkraften-grosse-Temperaturveraenderungen-besser-erwartet
and so on. Researchers from Israel even showed that corals of the same species can survive in 5 degrees warmer water than the normal tropical temperature level.
There are a huge number of works that prove this. Equally huge, however, is the number in which these works are negated. Until one again is “surprised” that corals are nevertheless tougher than thought. I call this typical life in a bubble, that BUBBLE of the climate alarmists.
Red Sea is a lot hotter and saltier…..same corals…they do not bleach
…different zoox clade..that’s all
Thanks Hans-Georg, appreciate the input and links but I’ll need to brush up on my German! Many of us non-Europeans are multilingually challenged. :<O
Corals survived and thrived in the much hotter oceans of the Cretaceous and early Paleogene Periods.
Shallow water coral have symbiotic algae, a bleaching event is merely the shedding of one type, the coral will soon gather another. Corals evolved back during a hothouse climate, they can handle warmer water.
I am going to enjoy the goracles disciples screams and attempted rebuttals of this
No you won’t. You will barely hear a whisper, if you’re lucky. Recovering coals is contrary to the Watermelons propaganda, therefore, it’ll be ignored. And if they can’t ignore it, they’ll minimize it to the greatest possible extent.
The Guardian recently bigged up the “death” of the GBR corals as a consequence of Global Warming. Oddly enough, I can’t find any mention of this recovery on their website. Perhaps someone should remind them.
The Guardian: wrong about everything, every time.
Thank fook for that, before legions of well intentioned goody gooders applied a panic stricken and ill-conceived ‘fix’ that would have utterly & completely wasted the thing.
Ma Nature dodged one there alright
Are we sure it isn’t a Zombie Reef? 🙂
Who would’ve thought that a coral reef that has survived hundreds of millions of years wouldn’t be able to survive a couple of years of unusual weather patterns? Well most people with a brain and not an agenda.
Well said Paul R. In another who would have thunk it gem, there was a report that scientists at Stanford University (presumably desparate to find climate alarm) had researched how people felt about what I would call weather and found that people felt better when it was warm, miserable when it was wet, but not so positive when it got over 30C.
Astonishing news no doubt and well worth whatever money expended on this Earth shattering piece of academic work. Although I’ve actually personally enjoyed temperatures above 30C, but obviously I’m deplorable – you just have to be a bit sensible about working or living in those condition.
I’m from Canada. Right now we are in the middle of a winter storm. When I was down in Florida in September, all the locals seemed unaffected by the 34° 99% humidity. And lets face it, a lot of us Canadians pay big bucks to go to hot (30°C) locations in the winter. The whole notion that hot is bad is completely bogus.
The northern Great Barrier Reef has tides. How can coral be exposed to air before it dies?
air, direct sun that would cook it, fresh water/rain, drying winds…..
These coral reef researchers sure seem to get into the news a lot. Funding, bleaching, extinction, rebuilding, new rsearch vessel, funding, recovery, global warming, diving equipment, nice tan, New York Times, $500 to save the coral, $1,000 to accompany researchers on a dive day, live at the beach, Institue of Marine Sciences. Chasing Coral.
Corals are doing fine. There is a more dire research need further south. This is how Glaciologist Dr Andy Smith studies ice shelf calving according to David Attenborough in the Frozen Planet. I can imagine how e.g. Turney’s ship of fools expedition would have benefited from it
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02029/Frozen-Planet-expl_2029167i.jpg
oo, oo… I sense a headline!
‘Warmunist’s Blowing Up Ice Shelves to Support Global Warming Narrative’
:))
I’m sure he’s looking for echo imaging of the ice. Well, he might be surprised to find he’s placed his equipment over an unknown fissure.
He is really in the pay of big oil and is conducting a seismic survey. But he need to dampen those holes.
If corals cannot tolerate warming, why do reef locations look like this?
http://coraldigest.org/images/4/40/02_06a_lg.jpg
Because…because…It’s all Man’s fault. 🙂
Or, El Nino’s fault.
Notice: even it the tropical zone there are no reefs off the west coast of South America, Baja California, most of West Africa or Oman.
Why? The water is too cold!
NO the water is too deap for coral. It you only go a couple of miles off shore the water is already too deep. A few more and it’s over a mile deap. Coral needs light to survive. also the water is only warm near the surface. There are corals there but only in a narrow stripallong the coast which the tape doesn’t show.
Well, not exactly true. Just inside the tip of Baja is an excellent dive location known as Cabo Pulmo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabo_Pulmo_National_Park
Anyone who has surfed around Cabo knows, no wetsuit needed on south side and to the east of Cabo, slightly north on westside of the peninsula and you better have one handy…upwelling from deep water makes it much less-pleasant.
Two other small Mexican coral reef systems:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444513885500151
And the largest one in Central America, where the cool California Current peters out:
https://www.anywhere.com/costa-rica/destinations/uvita/tours/snorkeling-at-the-marino-ballena-national-park
But in general, TTY is right. While North America’s south-flowing California Current is cool, South America’s north-flowing Humboldt Current is downright cold. As in frigid. Hence penguins on the equator.
Depends on the current too. For example, in Western Australia the corals extend along the SW coastline because of the Leeuwin Current.
That can depend on the type of coral
Here in southern Australia at latitude 37 south there are coral gardens at the entrance to Port Phillip bay where winter ( late May to mid September ) air temperatures would range from 6c to 14 c with water temperatures probably about 12 to14 c compared with water temperatures in the tropical north of around 28-32 c
We have corals off the UK.
See
http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife/habitats/deep-water-corals
A quote: –
“Deep-water corals are also referred to as cold-water corals, as they, unlike tropical corals, grow in water with temperatures ranging from 4°C to 12°C. They form on silt or rocks on higher surfaces that provides them better access to ocean currents that are rich in nutrients.”
But not, strictly, reefs: –
“The coral form colonies that grow in large patches and in appearance they are much like reefs; the largest recorded in UK waters is 30m in height. The deep water aggregations are often described as mounds rather than reefs as it better describes the calcium carbonate skeleton remaining as the new coral grows.”
Auto
I’m aware corals grow even in the cold, Antarctic waters.
My point was: if corals cannot survive warm, why do they grow in the tropics? They can even survive being exposed to air under direct mid-day tropical sun the whole duration of a low tide. I might too, just about.
I am quite certain that coral would not like cooling.
More robust recovery than was expected…. well, good. Gaia can take care of her own, as most of us )mature) persons know quite well. I’m not sure I understand the bleaching mechanism, but if it’s a resting cycle before the next growth spurt, who in the blue-eyed world are we mere mortals to interfere with it?
I am utterly fascinated by this desperate need to “fix” things that can take care of themselves quite well without us.
I would be considerably happier if the do-gooders would take some time out of their busybody lives to get rid of invasive species of plants like buckthorn (a UK import) and purple loosestrife. I’d rather see the native wildflowers like prairie smoke or listaria or marsh marigold when I get out with a camera, but these two are the most prolific pests I’ve ever run into.
But the problem with my wish is that the do-gooders are so ignorant about biology, botany and native species that they’d mow down everything in sight, or root out the wrong things and leave the trash plants.
And yes, I blame them for the problem with domesticated honeybees. Their scramble for “natural” products has done more harm than they can possibly imagine.
Not a resting cycle, just unusual tides that kept the coral out of the water for to long. Lower down the reefs are fine. These reef experts recently had a surprise some one found another reef system about a half a mile out to sea in deeper water, the experts did not know about. It was pristine.
But surely the whole of the oceans are already more acidic than a bath of sulphuric acid? Its a wonder any boats can get out there to see the GBR without being eaten alive by the vitriolic seas…
On a serious note I don’t seem too have heard much of the ‘ocean slightly less alkaline, closer to pure natural water pH7’ scare recently…has it gone away? Or has Pres. Trump decide to withdraw from that too?
Boats being eaten alive? Interesting.
Mixed metaphors often provide new insights….
Can the tourist industry sue the alarmists who claimed the reef would never recover thus scaring away thousands of overseas visitors?
There is a long queue of interested parties who should sue alarmists.
Thousands of fewer visitors, with their accompanying sunscreen oil slicks, might be a good thing for the reef.
This could work if there was a counter suit after the tourists win their case for destroying the reef against the sunscreen companies because as we all know, “corporations evil, must destroy evil capitalists”(said in Frankenstein voice). They just have to wait until the diving and snorkeling season picks up and then they can pay the lawyers to cash in against the environmentalists. There’s a gold mine there if I’ve ever seen one. lol
FYI, from the AIMS website:
” The Great Barrier Reef has lost half its coral cover in the last 27 years. The loss was due to storm damage (48%), crown of thorns starfish (42%), and bleaching (10%) according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today by researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville and the University of Wollongong.”
So basically even if you are a true Green believer the effect of man is a few percent with the majority of factors being normal natural. What has worried me for several years is that the green warriors are poisoning and manually removing the Crown of Thorn Starfish a completely natural predator. There are a number of competing and conflicting hypotheses that there may be an overpopulation but the debate has never been settled. You would think anyone with Green credentials would tread carefully in that situation but nope Coral is prettier and much more saleable than the crown of thorn starfish.
The fact they may be doing more harm to the reef than good doesn’t seem to enter their heads or even their thoughts.
If you are a ‘true Green believer’ the effect of Man is still catastrophic. Storm damage is obviously due to CAGW / climate change. The crown-of-thorns starfish is obviously reacting to Man’s evil influence by breeding in plague proportions.
Inconvenient facts (truths?) have rarely inconvenienced people of faith, and may be adroitly skirted by those who are making money from convenient lies.
This is worse than we thought! These are zombie corals!
LOL
This story resembles environmental activist Philippe Cousteau Jr’s coral revelation in the Southern Red Sea. Worth watching and listening carefully every second from 7 minutes onwards.
Enjoy.
It is amazing the display of cognitive dissonance from the 7 minute mark. The effort required to maintain a mindset of impending disaster must be enormous.
I don’t see any cognitive dissonance . He is very surprised to find that coral in such a healthy state and says it goes against all his experience. What would be interesting is how he reacts to that and whether he changes his ideas in face of new evidence. Sadly the video cuts off.
Just stupid people. At 5:14 notice the freckles on his fingers. His skin will look like a loose hanging leather in another decade or two, assuming he isn’t killed by a melanoma. These fools need to have sun protection. Their white skins should not be exposed to the UV at those latitudes. Yeah. I am sure they just happened to find an obsidian clam digger’s tool walking around like that.
And, that stupid Cousteau. Gawd. I have heard for years how great the coral diving is in the Red Sea.
The age of Stupid is in full flower.
Are they really this stupid or is their audience that stupid?
Many religions have a myth involving cyclical death and rebirth, for instance of a god. The Egyptians had Osiris, the Sumerians their Tammuz, the ancient Greeks Adonis and Dionysis, the Norse had Balder, and so pn.
For the cult of the satan gas with the atomic number of the beast, the Great Barrier Reef fulfils the role of the regular death and rebirth myth.
Re: “[It’s] very surprising as previous studies have shown a two-to-three year delay in reproductive activity following bleaching events” Moral: Don’t just believe previous studies.
Um, what caused the bleaching? How much of that cause has changed to now allow recovery? Can’t be the atmospheric CO2 level since it keeps rising, can it?
Researchers are surprised == Please read this non-news that goes against the story line we gave last time.
Scientists are flabbergasted. == Oh, the consensus was just again found to be unbased.
Could not believe their eyes == Yet again an academic institution has replaced open mind with preassumptions.
I do think it important for all of us to cite “global warming” as a natural fact of interglacial periods as to those who would prostitute facts related to AGW (anthropogenic global warming) .
On top of gentle warming there was a sudden Climate Shift around 20 years ago, but there is a bit of a deafening silence about it, maybe because it doesn’t fit with the consensus CO2 control knob.
I seem to recall at the time of the alarming press releases that there were no mentions of a possible recovery. The death of the reef was final. It’s recovery is great news. The alarmists can recycle the story in another 15 years or so after the next large El Niño.
This just in – block of ice falls from the sky!!
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-scotland-41403130/huge-ice-block-falls-from-sky-into-family-s-garden
The angry sky god is warning us that more CO2 emissions and he / she will smite us with an ice age!
I have commented a number of times on the speed with which coral recovers from bleaching. If the Australian scientists are surprised by this, then shame on them for not knowing the most basic facts about their chosen field of study. This wilful blindness on their part makes it clear just how much of the koolaid they have drunk …
w.
Like so many plants a hard prune or bush fire just shows how resistant end determined living organisms are to survive and how they spring back newly invigorated.
As I stated above they don’t even understand the 42% factor being the Crown of Thorn starfish and yet they are willing to wage war on a natural species with almost zero understanding of it.
Yes you have, and thank you very much.
Any amateur reefer (marine aquarist) can attest to the hardiness of reef-building corals. That these ‘experts’ are so surprised at the recovery is an indictment of their lack of knowledge. How does the old saying go, ” … they know more and more about less and less until eventually they know all about nothing.”
All for the purpose of their careers and grant funding, Willis. What other reasons would there be, as all geoscientists and reef biologists know this.
I don’t think they get out of their offices very often Willis, other than the occasional aerial survey. Playing with a computer is probably more fun than real fieldwork.
OT, dont like the look of that sunspot pointing right at us. Time to check the earth strap on my Faraday’s box.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/solar/
Any evidence it’s getting ready to burp?
This isn’t surprising at all. I’m 71 and I recall at least one maybe two times in the past a serious bleaching occurred and the coral recovered though I don’t recall the time frame for the recovery. It seems that the coral is more resilient than some scare mongering scientists expect. Nature tends not to pay much attention to man kinds expectations.
Stephen,
RE: “It seems that the coral is more resilient than some scare mongering scientists expect.”
Just so. Another example of ‘Linear Thinking In A Cyclical World!’
I have a theory about that bleaching.
At the time, the water currents up there were particularly slow.
That means that the normal wafting of food across the reef would have dropped sharply.
The coral inhabitants all decided to take a holiday and find a better food source.
(I don’t like to think they died of starvation)
Now they are coming back home.
Good one, Andy 😉
Its not as far fetched as it might seem.
The waters at the time were definitely low on food, oxygen and CO2. plus theyexposed more of the coral than usual because the El Nino dragged the water level DOWN.