- A growing number of scientists are predicting a large-scale El-Nino this year fuelling fears of floods, draughts and large scale impacts on industry and farming.
- However, the impacts on the world’s coral reef are even more disastrous as it is expected to surpass the previous major El-Nino in 1997-98 that had destroying around 16% of the world’s corals.
- In 1998, the Coral Triangle, a Southeast Asian bioregion home to the largest number of marine species on earth, started to bleach in May and continued till September.
- This is due to prolonged periods of temperature anomaly experienced during El-Nino as even half a degree on top of background temperatures is enough to cause bleaching.
- The Coral Triangle is particularly vulnerable since the more since equator passes through the middle of the region, due to which it experiences both southern and northern hemispheres.
- Also, local stressors such as overfishing, destructive fishing and pollution influence the regions as millions depend upon these fishes for their livelihood.
- Although Coral recovery is also common as corals can recover their symbiotes under mild conditions, because of increase in background temperature the corals cannot recover as before.
- Even in the case of recovery, old coral growths that have developed over centuries are fast replaced with faster growing species that colonise the area and homogenize the ecosystem.
- Scientists believe that corals could be on the verge of extinction by 2050.
- One way to counter this is to drastically reduce the carbon emissions worldwide, prohibiting disruption of marine habitats, and reducing pressure on fisheries.
- Read at: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/el-nio-will-be-disastrous-for-the-worlds-coral-reefs/article6091184.ece
Exams Perspective:
- Coral Bleeching
- Coral Reefs
- Coral Recovery
- El-Nino