More than 80% of the world’s reefs hit by bleaching after worst global event on record | Climate crisis

Scientists have warned that coral reefs in the world have been pushed into an “unknown zone” through the worst global bleaching event on the record, which now recorded more than 80 % of coral reefs on the planet.

Coral reefs were exposed to at least 82 countries and regions to sufficient heat to convert white coral reefs since the global event began in January 2023, which is the latest data from the United States government Coral Control of coral reefs.

Coral reefs are known as rainforests in the sea due to their high concentration of biological diversity Supports about a third of all marine species and Billion people.

But high temperatures in the oceans spread like forest fires underwater on coral reefs across the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Indian Oceans, which led to the destruction and killing of countless coral reefs.

the 84 % of the heat coral reef at the whitening level in this continuous event Compared to 68 % during the third event, which lasted from 2014 to 2017, 37 % in 2010 and 21 % in the first event in 1998.

Dr. Derek Manzilo, director of the coral reef watch, said that even coral reefs that scientists considered shelters of increased temperature levels in the ocean.

The fact that many coral reef areas have been affected, including the alleged Refugia thermal Like Raja Ambat and the Gulf of Eilat, it indicates that warming in the ocean has reached a level that there is no longer any safe port of coral whitening and its repercussions.

Several areas of whitening in successive years, including the largest coral reef system in the world, have witnessed the great coral barrier in Australia, where the authorities announced last week a large -scale bleaching event in only nine years.

Other coral reefs in the world have seen the world along the Ningapo coast in Western Australia the highest levels of heat stress in recent months.

On the other side of the Indian Ocean, scientists have reported whitening in recent weeks that affect coral reefs off Madagascar and East Africa coast, including ISIMANGALISO Wetland Park.

“This event was unprecedented. “This coral reef did not come across before.”

She said: “Through continuous bleaching, people’s ability to do the monitoring they have to do,” she said. “The fact that this latest event, which is characterized by the whitening of global coral, is still continuing to take coral reefs in the world to unknown water.

“[For] People who spend their entire lives in their work to monitor and monitor coral reefs, protect coral reefs, and to live and rely on them, seeing such something should be devastating.

She said: “Environmental sadness is real. People who spend a lot of time underwater see that they are changing in front of their eyes.”

GCRMN collects the monitoring data for the case report next year, but Shaflk is that this report will not give a complete picture of the effect of the event.

Scientists in North and Central America, including Florida, the Caribbean and Mexico, were among the first to raise the alarm after recording standard temperatures. Severe bleaching in the summer of the northern hemisphere of 2023.

Coral reefs can recover from bleaching if the temperatures are not very extreme, but investigative studies conducted in the months that followed the event have begun to draw a picture of coral death on a large scale.

Throughout Florida, On an average of one in five coral reefs I lost. On the calm side of Mexico, One region lost between 50 % and 93 % of coral reefs. barely A quarter of the coral reefs were killed by Hit last year in the remote Shaghos Islands In the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Description of scholars “Dead coral reef cemeteryIn the northern part of Great Barrier Reef after bleaching in early 2024 It caused the death of 40 % of coral reefs in one area in the south.

After the intense heat in 2023, it was the coral reef hour She had to add three new threat levels to the global bleaching system To represent the unprecedented coral reefs with thermal pressure.

Melanie McField, founder of The Healthy Reefs for Healthy People in the Caribbean Sea region, said coral reefs are calm all over the world.

She said: “Whitening is always strange – as if the silent snowfall has descended on coral reefs … There is usually an absence from the attached fish and the absence of vibrant colors on coral reefs.” “It is the pallor of Ashin and stillness in what should be a vibrant and vibrant.”

Dr. Lorenzo Alvarez Philip, the coral scientist at the National University of Mexico, surveyed coral reefs through the Caribbean Sea region and the Gulf of Mexico after bleaching in 2023 and again in 2024.

He said that the most destructive effect is the loss of coral reefs to build coral reefs, such as Elkhorns, which helps protect the coast and support many other marine life.

“Many of the coral colonies I knew well, which survived [a major disease] The disease spread a few years ago, died within weeks.

“Feeling of sexual impotence besides the need to document what was happening at least made me very worried – this was especially difficult when we were about to dive into the sites in which we knew that there were large groups of sensitive coral reefs. In almost all cases, we ended with a very frustrating feeling when we confirmed that almost all or almost all coral reefs had died.”

Dr. Valeria Bizaro, prominent coral scientist at the Perry Institute of Marine Sciences, which works on coral reefs in the Bahamas and the Caribbean Sea region, witnessed severe whitening in the Bahamas in July 2023.

“In a blink of my eyes,” she said, shallow coral reefs, white landscapes, with widespread death among the coral reefs used in restoration projects. Amazing sea lovers and soft coral reefs quickly died.

She said, “It was as if they were melting with heat.”

“World leaders really need to adhere to reducing fossil fuels, increasing investments in clean energies and making them a reality. We need them to stop obtaining it on paper and the news, we need to be real.”