S1E111: Coral reefs can recover - but can they keep up with warming seas?

Nov 19, 2023

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Better protection, waste management imperative for coral reef survival.

Synopsis: Every first and third Monday of the month, The Straits Times analyses the beat of the changing environment, from biodiversity conservation to climate change.

Coral reefs occupy only about 0.2% of the ocean floor, yet they are home to a quarter of all marine life. But oceans absorb most of the heat trapped in the atmosphere due to increasing greenhouse gases; this has caused oceans to warm and become more acidic, and there has been a lot of damage to corals. The corals can recover, but can they keep up?

In this episode, The Straits Times’ US Bureau Chief Nirmal Ghosh discusses the risk to, and the resilience of, coral reefs, with experts on either side of the world - Jennifer Pollom in Florida, executive director of the Ocean Conservation Foundation and director of conservation for Rainbow Reef Dive Centre, and marine ecologist Dr Jani Tanzil, facility director at St John’s Island National Marine Laboratory in Singapore.

Highlights (click/tap above):

00:42 Australia's Great Barrier Reef has suffered six mass bleaching events between 1998 and 2022 - with back-to-back events in 2016 and 17.

02:58 In Key Largo, month over month photographs of massive deterioration

04:51 In the Gulf of Thailand, some low levels of bleaching in the shallow waters - but it's nothing like what was seen in 2016 in Southeast Asia.

05:55 Heat waves are pretty typical in South Florida, but this is the largest bleaching event that we've basically ever seen.

08:08 Human anthropogenic stress - like sedimentation - has a huge additional, negative synergistic effect with global warming.

10:16 Instant morbidity in shallow reefs in Florida

11:17 Huge concern for the future because the reefs are what everybody comes to, to see, to snorkel, to scuba dive, and also to fish.

12:38 There has been a rise in conservation tourism in Southeast Asia - a good thing overall.

14:15 In Indonesia over a million corals have been transplanted, but only a fraction actually followed throughStandards on what constitutes green investments: Why this is important

18:27 Wish list : more protection, more waste management

Produced by: Nirmal Ghosh (nirmal@sph.com.sg), Ernest Luis, Fa’izah Sani & Amirul Karim

Edited by: Amirul Karim

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