Latest news with #coralreefs
CNA
8 hours ago
- Climate
- CNA
Southwest Pacific hit by unprecedented marine heatwaves in 2024, UN says
SINGAPORE: Unprecedented heatwaves in the Southwest Pacific affected more than 10 per cent of the global ocean surface in 2024, damaging coral reefs and putting the region's last remaining tropical glacier at risk of extinction, the UN's weather body said on Thursday (Jun 5). Average 2024 temperatures in the region - which covers Australia and New Zealand as well as southeast Asian island states like Indonesia and the Philippines - were nearly half a degree Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 mean, the World Meteorological Organization said in an annual report. "Much of the region saw at least severe marine heat wave conditions at some point during the course of 2024, particularly in areas near and south of the equator," said the WMO's Blair Trewin, one of the report's authors. Extreme heat over the year affected 40 million sq km of ocean, and new temperature highs were set in the Philippines and Australia, the report said. Ocean surface temperatures also broke records, while total ocean heat content was the second-highest annual average, behind 2022. An unprecedented number of cyclones, which experts have attributed to climate change, also caused havoc in the Philippines in October and November. Sea levels continue to rise more quickly than the global average, an urgent problem in a region where more than half the population live within 500m of the coast, the report added. The report also cited satellite data showing that the region's sole tropical glacier, located in Indonesia on the western part of the island of New Guinea, shrank by up to 50 per cent last year.
CNA
8 hours ago
- Climate
- CNA
Southwest Pacific hit by unprecedented marine heat waves in 2024, UN says
SINGAPORE: Unprecedented heatwaves in the Southwest Pacific affected more than 10 per cent of the global ocean surface in 2024, damaging coral reefs and putting the region's last remaining tropical glacier at risk of extinction, the UN's weather body said on Thursday (Jun 5). Average 2024 temperatures in the region - which covers Australia and New Zealand as well as southeast Asian island states like Indonesia and the Philippines - were nearly half a degree Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 mean, the World Meteorological Organization said in an annual report. "Much of the region saw at least severe marine heat wave conditions at some point during the course of 2024, particularly in areas near and south of the equator," said the WMO's Blair Trewin, one of the report's authors. Extreme heat over the year affected 40 million sq km of ocean, and new temperature highs were set in the Philippines and Australia, the report said. Ocean surface temperatures also broke records, while total ocean heat content was the second-highest annual average, behind 2022. An unprecedented number of cyclones, which experts have attributed to climate change, also caused havoc in the Philippines in October and November. Sea levels continue to rise more quickly than the global average, an urgent problem in a region where more than half the population live within 500m of the coast, the report added. The report also cited satellite data showing that the region's sole tropical glacier, located in Indonesia on the western part of the island of New Guinea, shrank by up to 50 per cent last year.
Reuters
13 hours ago
- Science
- Reuters
Southwest Pacific hit by unprecedented marine heat waves in 2024, UN says
SINGAPORE, June 5 (Reuters) - Unprecedented heat waves in the Southwest Pacific affected more than 10% of the global ocean surface in 2024, damaging coral reefs and putting the region's last remaining tropical glacier at risk of extinction, the UN's weather body said on Thursday. Average 2024 temperatures in the region - which covers Australia and New Zealand as well as southeast Asian island states like Indonesia and the Philippines - were nearly half a degree Celsius (0.9 Fahrenheit) higher than the 1991-2020 mean, the World Meteorological Organization said in an annual report. "Much of the region saw at least severe marine heat wave conditions at some point during the course of 2024, particularly in areas near and south of the equator," said the WMO's Blair Trewin, one of the report's authors. Extreme heat over the year affected 40 million square kilometres (15.4 million square miles) of ocean, and new temperature highs were set in the Philippines and Australia, the report said. Ocean surface temperatures also broke records, while total ocean heat content was the second-highest annual average, behind 2022. An unprecedented number of cyclones, which experts have attributed to climate change, also caused havoc in the Philippines in October and November. Sea levels continue to rise more quickly than the global average, an urgent problem in a region where more than half the population live within 500 metres (547 yards) of the coast, the report added. The report also cited satellite data showing that the region's sole tropical glacier, located in Indonesia on the western part of the island of New Guinea, shrank by up to 50% last year. "Unfortunately, if this rate of loss continues, this glacier could be gone by 2026 or shortly thereafter," said the WMO's Thea Turkington, another of the report's authors.
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
Coral-rich Greek archipelago hopes to gain from trawler ban
As a reddish dawn broke over the tiny, coral-rich Greek archipelago of Fournoi, Manolis Mytikas's wooden fishing boat slowly glided home, his nets almost empty. The modest catch nevertheless quickly drew several islanders in search of fresh fish, a rarity in past years in this island chain in the northeastern Aegean Sea, which has fewer than 1,500 inhabitants in total. "Today, there were two of us heading out to sea, and we caught some fish by chance," said the 76-year-old fisherman, his skin deeply tanned by the Mediterranean sun. "Yesterday, we earned 30 euros ($34). The day before yesterday, not a penny. Sometimes, we don't even have enough to eat," he told AFP. But things could be looking up for this small corner of the Aegean Sea. Last month, the Greek government banned bottom trawling in the waters around the archipelago, to protect a recent discovery of exceptionally rich coral reefs. Greece is also outlawing bottom trawling in national marine parks by 2026 and in all protected marine areas by 2030, the first country in Europe to take such a step. Fishing is generally allowed in protected marine areas worldwide, often even by trawlers, which scrape the seabed with a huge funnel-shaped net. "Finally!" Mytikas exclaimed when told of the ban. "They've ravaged the sea. They plough the seabed and destroy everything." At the island port, his colleague Vaggelis Markakis, 58, compared trawlers to "bulldozers". "If we stop them from coming here, our sea will come back to life," Mytikas said. "The sea will be filled with fish again." Research conducted in this archipelago by the conservation groups Under the Pole, which organises diving expeditions in extreme environments, and Archipelagos, in collaboration with European scientific institutions, has highlighted the existence of major underwater animal populations. At depths between 60 and 150 meters (around 200 to 500 feet), scientists have documented over 300 species living on the seabed under minimal light. - 'Underwater forests' - "What we discovered is beyond imagination -- vast coral reefs dating back thousands of years, still intact," gushed Anastasia Miliou, scientific director of Archipelagos. The sea floor-dwelling species discovered include vibrantly red gorgonians (Paramuricea clavata) and black corals (Antipathella subpinnata). "When these organisms occur at high densities, they form true underwater forests," said Lorenzo Bramanti, a researcher at the CNRS Laboratory of Ecogeochemistry of Benthic Environments. But these habitats are extremely sensitive. "A single trawl pass is enough to raze them," warned Stelios Katsanevakis, professor of oceanography at the University of the Aegean. And the damage can be potentially irreversible, added Bramanti. "Once destroyed, these forests may take decades or even centuries to recover," said the marine scientist, who has worked on corals in the Mediterranean, Caribbean and Pacific. "No one doubts that cutting down a forest is an ecological disaster. The same is true for animal forests," Bramanti said. - Setting an example - By banning bottom trawling around Fournoi, Bramanti hopes Greece will set an example for other Mediterranean countries, he said. "We must act quickly, because these are among the last ecosystems still untouched by climate change," given that they are located at depths greater than 70 meters, he said. "And we risk losing them before we even truly understand them." But the measure has left industrial fishing professionals fuming. There are around 220 bottom trawlers in Greece, and sector representatives complain restrictions on their activity are excessive. "We were not invited to any kind of discussion on this matter," said Kostas Daoultzis, head of the trawler cooperative at the northern port of Nea Michaniona, one of the country's main fish markets. Daoultzis said the decisions were "based on reports from volunteer organisations... lacking scientific backing". He said trawlers already avoid coral areas, which can damage their equipment. Fournoi fishermen counter that trawlers do fish in their waters, but turn off their tracking systems to avoid detection. Under pressure globally, trawling is likely to be on the agenda at a United Nations Ocean Conference next week in the French city of Nice. Daoultzis said he fears for the survival of his profession. "Our fishing spaces keep shrinking. Our activity is under threat, and consumers will suffer -- fish prices will skyrocket," he warned. vk-yap/jph/jhb
Malay Mail
3 days ago
- Health
- Malay Mail
As world gets hotter, what happens when coral reefs die?
PARIS, June 3 — The fate of coral reefs has been written with a degree of certainty rare in climate science: at 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, most are expected to die. This is not a far-off scenario. Scientists predict that the rise of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) will be reached within a decade and that beyond that point, many coral simply cannot survive. It is important to accept this and ask what next 'rather than trying to hold onto the past', said David Obura, chair of IPBES, the UN's expert scientific panel on biodiversity. 'I wish it were different,' Obura, a Kenyan reef scientist and founding director of CORDIO East Africa, a marine research organisation, told AFP. 'We need to be pragmatic about it and ask those questions, and face up to what the likely future will be.' And yet, it is a subject few marine scientists care to dwell on. 'We are having a hard time imagining that all coral reefs really could die off,' said Melanie McField, a Caribbean reef expert, who described a 'sort of pre-traumatic stress syndrome' among her colleagues. 'But it is likely in the two-degree world we are rapidly accelerating to,' McField, founding director of the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative, told AFP. When stressed in hotter ocean waters, corals expel the microscopic algae that provides their characteristic colour and food source. Without respite, bleached corals slowly starve. At 1.5C of warming relative to pre-industrial times, between 70 and 90 percent of coral reefs are expected to perish, according to the IPCC, the global authority on climate science. At 2C, that number rises to 99 percent. Even with warming as it stands today – about 1.4C – mass coral death is occurring, and many scientists believe the global collapse of tropical reefs may already be underway. What comes next Obura said it was not pessimistic to imagine a world without coral reefs, but an urgent question that scientists were 'only just starting to grapple with'. 'I see no reason to not be clear about where we are at this point in time,' Obura said. 'Let's be honest about that, and deal with the consequences.' Rather than disappear completely, coral reefs as they exist today will likely evolve into something very different, marine scientists on four continents told AFP. This would happen as slow-growing hard corals – the primary reef builders that underpin the ecosystem – die off, leaving behind white skeletons without living tissue. Gradually, these would be covered by algae and colonised by simpler organisms better able to withstand hotter oceans, like sponges, mussels, and weedy soft corals like sea fans. 'There will be less winners than there are losers,' said Tom Dallison, a marine scientist and strategic advisor to the International Coral Reef Initiative. These species would dominate this new underwater world. The dead coral beneath – weakened by ocean acidification, and buffeted by waves and storms – would erode over time into rubble. 'They will still exist, but they will just look very different. It is our responsibility to ensure the services they provide, and those that depend on them, are protected,' Dallison said. Dark horizon One quarter of all ocean species live among the world's corals. Smaller, sparser, less biodiverse reefs simply means fewer fish and other marine life. The collapse of reefs threatens in particular the estimated one billion people who rely on them for food, tourism income, and protection from coastal erosion and storms. But if protected and managed properly, these post-coral reefs could still be healthy, productive, attractive ecosystems that provide some economic benefit, said Obura. So far, the picture is fuzzy – research into this future has been very limited. Stretched resources have been prioritised for protecting coral and exploring novel ways to make reefs more climate resilient. But climate change is not the only thing threatening corals. Tackling pollution, harmful subsidies, overfishing and other drivers of coral demise would give 'the remaining places the best possible chance of making it through whatever eventual warming we have', Obura said. Conservation and restoration efforts were 'absolutely essential' but alone were like 'pushing a really heavy ball up a hill, and that hill is getting steeper', he added. Trying to save coral reefs 'is going to be extremely difficult' as long as we keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere, said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, an oceans expert from France's flagship scientific research institute, CNRS. But some coral had developed a level of thermal tolerance, he said, and research into restoring small reef areas with these resilient strains held promise. 'How do we work in this space when you have this sort of big dark event on the horizon? It's to make that dark event a little brighter,' said Dallison. — AFP
