Future too warm for baby sharks
New research has found as climate change causes the world’s oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller, exhausted, undernourished and into environments that are already difficult for them to survi
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au
A long-term study of coral cover on island groups of the Great Barrier Reef has found declines of between 40 and 50 percent of live, hard corals at inshore island groups during the past few decades.
Scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU) say the data was so alarming that they checked and re-checked it.
The study’s lead author Dr Daniela Ceccarelli and a team of researchers surveyed coral cover on fringing reefs of the Palm, Magnetic, Whitsunday and Keppel Island groups along the central and southern Great Barrier Reef, and compared it to historical records.
“Normal cycles of disturbance and recovery are natural, and the reef historically has had good recovery potential,” Dr Ceccarelli said.
“But human impacts are increasing the frequency of disturbances such as coral bleaching, leaving little time between events to allow a full recovery,” she said.
“We were shocked when we calculated the changes.”
JCU researchers have monitored the condition and trends of inshore reefs in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) since the late 1990s.
Co-author Dr David Williamson, also from Coral CoE at JCU, said: “The impacts of individual disturbance events were patchy. Some reefs avoided the worst effects—but the cumulative impacts of multiple, frequent events reduced coral cover and diversity.”
Dr Ceccarelli said their latest expedition identified several factors that influenced coral cover on reefs at each island group, but two key drivers consistently stood out for all reefs: temperature stress from marine heatwaves and wave exposure.
“There was a clear threshold of heat stress above which coral cover consistently declined. We were surprised to find that corals on these inshore reefs appear to have a lower heat stress threshold than previously reported,” she said.
Dr Williamson said the effect of wave exposure was more complicated.
“The corals on the exposed, outer sides of the island had an advantage,” he said. “This is because they were well-flushed by currents.”
“This information can test management actions that aim to maintain natural biodiversity and ecological processes.”
“If we can tackle water quality locally and climate change globally, then there is hope,” Dr Ceccarelli said.
Paper: Ceccarelli D, Evans R, Logan M, Mantel P, Puotinen M, Petus C, Russ G, Williamson D. (2019). Ecological Applications. ‘Long‐term dynamics and drivers of coral and macroalgal cover on inshore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park’. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2008
Images are available for media use with this story only. Please credit as per the image caption to David Wachenfeld, Triggerfish Images.
CONTACTS
Dr Daniela Ceccarelli (Townsville)
P: +61 (0)7 4758 1866
M: +61 (0)488 510 702
E: dmcecca@gmail.com
Dr David Williamson (Currently overseas)
E: david.williamson@jcu.edu.au
FURTHER INFORMATION
Melissa Lyne (Media Manager, Coral CoE at JCU)
P: +61 (0)415 514 328
E: melissa.lyne@jcu.edu.au
New research has found as climate change causes the world’s oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller, exhausted, undernourished and into environments that are already difficult for them to survi
A new study shows the coastal protection coral reefs currently provide will start eroding by the end of the century, as the world continues to warm and the oceans acidify. A team of researchers led
A team of scientists led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) won one of the nation’s top science awards at tonight’s ‘Oscars of Australian science’, the Eureka P
An analytical tool will be used to assess the climate risks facing historic World Heritage sites in Africa—the ruins of two great 13th century ports and the remains of a palace and iron-making indus
Abstract: It is a little over a decade since research commenced into the effects of anthropogenic ocean acidification on marine fishes. In that time, we have learned that projected end-of-century
Abstract: Increased uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has caused the world’s ocean to become more acidic. Different marine habitats are known to have varying ranges of CO2 across mul
Abstract: The Allen Coral Atlas (http://allencoralatlas.org) partnership uses high-resolution satellite imagery, machine learning, and field data to map and monitor the world’s coral reefs at unp
Abstract: Climate change is causing the average surface temperature of the oceans to rise and increasing the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves. In addition, absorption of additional CO2
Abstract: Marine environments are a concealing medium, where observations of natural fish behavior are challenging. In particular, the geographic and depth distributions of migratory top predators ar
Abstract: Invasive species management can be the the subject of debate in many countries due to conflicting ecological, ethical, economic, and social reasons, especially when dealing with a species s
Abstract: Ocean acidification, the increase in seawater CO2 with all its associated consequences, is relatively well understood in open oceans. In shelf seas such as the Great Barrier Reef, processe
Abstract: The backdrop of legends and movies, the deep sea has always been unfathomable because we had no idea what existed there. Once thought to be barren of life, we now know this couldn’t be
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au