Corals
In Our Time: Science
00:00
Coral Bleaching
Disease outbreaks are also contributing to the death, of course. But probably we can learn a lot about the disease ecology of the organisms by studying this. When people were first exploring the oceans, one of the great threats to a mariner going across the ocean was, of course, low lying, submerged coral reef. Andu sailing across the ocean late at night would have been very treacherous around these tropical reefs. So they used to put people out on watch for sounds as they were listening for turtle shells and so on. Though there are now numerous back then, prior to large scale exploitation, that early warning system still works today.
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