The Great Barrier Reef is going under another wave of warm oceanic heat which is causing coral bleaching at a new extreme level.
Marking this the 3rd record of global coral bleaching and the longest running bleach thus far. Coral bleaching has impacted the reef with back to back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017. Giving the corals little room to recover what has been destroyed from the bleaching of last year.
According to a scientist James Kerry, corals need a decade to fully recover, even fast growing corals, and with mass bleaching taking place 12 months apart it is giving the reefs no time to recover the damaged made from the previous year.
With coral bleaching hitting hard in 2016 and 2017, the northern half of the reef was hit spreading across 900 miles of the reef this time. In 2016, the coral bleaching marked the biggest die-off of corals hitting reefs in the north harder. There was a 67 percent of shallow-water corals that died within that year.
The massive bleaching incidents of the corals are scientifically linked to the rising sea-surface temperatures caused by the rising temperatures on Earth.
Climate change is weakening the barrier reef with its rising temperature since the reefs are having to cope with the oceanic heat wave which is bleaching them. Since there have been carbon pollution emissions from humans, the Earth has been warming roughly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Scientists are now predicting if there is an interesting temperature of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit then the corals will go extinct around the world.
Researchers are studying the corals that have survived under the 3 years of global bleaching in hopes to find the secret to their success to be able to replicate the success to help coral adapt to warming world and ocean.
If scientists succeed, it will help preserve an ecosystem within our planet, but it will also bring benefits, economic benefits.
The Great Barrier Reef could generate 4.45 billion dollars in tourism revenue and supports about 70 thousand jobs. They also provide protection from storm surge.
