Uploaded April 2020 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
From what's causing it, to what it means for the world at large, and more! Join me as we explore how The Great Barrier Reef had a massive bleaching event!
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The Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of Australia, and is one of the natural wonders of the world. It's a place that is protected because of its importance not just to the world, but to the animals and various other creatures that reside in said reefs. However, despite many levels of protection, the Great Barrier Reef came under attack very recently via a mass bleaching event.
In fact, the reef has experienced its third mass coral bleaching event in five years, according to the scientist carrying out aerial surveys over hundreds of individual reefs. Now, for those of you who might be confused as to the wording, a "bleaching event" is NOT what happens when bleach is inserted into the waters of a populated area. Rather, it's an event where the water that the coral reefs are in reach a much hotter temperature than the reefs are used to. Because of this, they die out as they're not prepared for such temperatures.
These events can be very detrimental, and the loss of the reefs can harm a lot of things depending on the severity of it all.
Prof Terry Hughes told Guardian Australia: “We know this is a mass bleaching event and it’s a severe one.”
It follows the worst outbreaks of mass bleaching on record end about half the shallow water corals on the world’s biggest reef system in 2016 and 2017.
Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and one of the world’s leading authorities on bleaching and the Great Barrier Reef, said: “We know enough now that [the bleaching] is more severe than in 1998 and 2002. How it sits with 2016 and 2017 we are not sure yet.”
More surveys were done of the area, and the news that was brought out as a result was not that encouraging.
Dr Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Guardian Australia there was a risk that mass bleaching seen along the length of the Great Barrier Reef in 2020 could mark the start of another global-scale bleaching event.
Tropical coral reefs tend to be at a higher risk of bleaching during times when the Pacific Ocean is in a phase known as El Niño. The latest bleaching on the reef has hit during this cycle’s neutral phase.
“The real concern is with this much bleaching without tropical forcing,” Eakin said. “This may be a sign we’ve now tipped over to near-annual bleaching in many locations. It’s quite concerning that we are getting this much heat stress across the Great Barrier Reef in an Enso [El Niño southern oscillation]-neutral year. What we are seeing on the Great Barrier Reef and potentially elsewhere is really being driven just by anthropogenic climate change. If we get another El Niño, the odds are almost 100% that we will see another global bleaching event.”
Aerial surveys of 1,020 individual reefs completed across the length of the 2,300km marine park confirmed the bleaching when it was first suspected. The fact that the bleaching events are going from somewhat random or in El Nino years to annual is a very bad thing. Because there is a chance that reefs can recover from bleaching events should the temperature of the waters go down. But, if it stays consistent, they'll die before that happens, and with annual bleaching events possibly coming, that could indeed be the fate of many coral reefs around the world, not just the Great Barrier Reef.
We noted the bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, those ones affected the Great Barrier Reef in such a way that half the reefs died from the rise in water temperature.
Eakin said that when severe bleaching causes mass mortality of corals, “those events take a decade or more for recovery. We are seeing these events far too frequently”.
Before we dive even deeper into what is going on with the coral reefs and how to stop this from happening, be sure to like or dislike the video so that we can continue to improve for you the viewer! And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss ANY of our weekly videos.
Instead of looking right now at why this is happening, let's just into what would happen if the coral reefs of the world suddenly bleached out in full. Meaning that they all die from the various bleaching events that may start occurring annually, shall we?
The end of the coral threatens the area’s tourism industry (speaking solely to the Great Barrier Reef for now), which employs more than 700,000 people and brings in $5 billion annually. So imagine that, a whole tourism area wiped out because of this bleaching event, and $5 billion dollars a year...gone.
#DownTheRabbithole #GreatBarrierReef #SeaAnimals
From what's causing it, to what it means for the world at large, and more! Join me as we explore how The Great Barrier Reef had a massive bleaching event!
Subscribe for more videos: youtube.com/c/DownTheRabbitHoleG9As1e?sub_confirmation=1?
The Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of Australia, and is one of the natural wonders of the world. It's a place that is protected because of its importance not just to the world, but to the animals and various other creatures that reside in said reefs. However, despite many levels of protection, the Great Barrier Reef came under attack very recently via a mass bleaching event.
In fact, the reef has experienced its third mass coral bleaching event in five years, according to the scientist carrying out aerial surveys over hundreds of individual reefs. Now, for those of you who might be confused as to the wording, a "bleaching event" is NOT what happens when bleach is inserted into the waters of a populated area. Rather, it's an event where the water that the coral reefs are in reach a much hotter temperature than the reefs are used to. Because of this, they die out as they're not prepared for such temperatures.
These events can be very detrimental, and the loss of the reefs can harm a lot of things depending on the severity of it all.
Prof Terry Hughes told Guardian Australia: “We know this is a mass bleaching event and it’s a severe one.”
It follows the worst outbreaks of mass bleaching on record end about half the shallow water corals on the world’s biggest reef system in 2016 and 2017.
Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and one of the world’s leading authorities on bleaching and the Great Barrier Reef, said: “We know enough now that [the bleaching] is more severe than in 1998 and 2002. How it sits with 2016 and 2017 we are not sure yet.”
More surveys were done of the area, and the news that was brought out as a result was not that encouraging.
Dr Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Guardian Australia there was a risk that mass bleaching seen along the length of the Great Barrier Reef in 2020 could mark the start of another global-scale bleaching event.
Tropical coral reefs tend to be at a higher risk of bleaching during times when the Pacific Ocean is in a phase known as El Niño. The latest bleaching on the reef has hit during this cycle’s neutral phase.
“The real concern is with this much bleaching without tropical forcing,” Eakin said. “This may be a sign we’ve now tipped over to near-annual bleaching in many locations. It’s quite concerning that we are getting this much heat stress across the Great Barrier Reef in an Enso [El Niño southern oscillation]-neutral year. What we are seeing on the Great Barrier Reef and potentially elsewhere is really being driven just by anthropogenic climate change. If we get another El Niño, the odds are almost 100% that we will see another global bleaching event.”
Aerial surveys of 1,020 individual reefs completed across the length of the 2,300km marine park confirmed the bleaching when it was first suspected. The fact that the bleaching events are going from somewhat random or in El Nino years to annual is a very bad thing. Because there is a chance that reefs can recover from bleaching events should the temperature of the waters go down. But, if it stays consistent, they'll die before that happens, and with annual bleaching events possibly coming, that could indeed be the fate of many coral reefs around the world, not just the Great Barrier Reef.
We noted the bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, those ones affected the Great Barrier Reef in such a way that half the reefs died from the rise in water temperature.
Eakin said that when severe bleaching causes mass mortality of corals, “those events take a decade or more for recovery. We are seeing these events far too frequently”.
Before we dive even deeper into what is going on with the coral reefs and how to stop this from happening, be sure to like or dislike the video so that we can continue to improve for you the viewer! And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss ANY of our weekly videos.
Instead of looking right now at why this is happening, let's just into what would happen if the coral reefs of the world suddenly bleached out in full. Meaning that they all die from the various bleaching events that may start occurring annually, shall we?
The end of the coral threatens the area’s tourism industry (speaking solely to the Great Barrier Reef for now), which employs more than 700,000 people and brings in $5 billion annually. So imagine that, a whole tourism area wiped out because of this bleaching event, and $5 billion dollars a year...gone.
#DownTheRabbithole #GreatBarrierReef #SeaAnimals
