Nature - Stopping Warming Only Way To Save GBR; Water Quality, Fishing Controls Largely Immaterial

[hatrack]

The survival of the Great Barrier Reef hinges on urgent moves to cut global warming because nothing else will protect coral from the coming cycle of mass bleaching events, new research has found. The study of three mass bleaching events on Australian reefs in 1998, 2002 and 2016 found coral was damaged by underwater heatwaves regardless of any local improvements to water quality or fishing controls.

The research, authored by 46 scientists and published in Nature, raises serious questions about Australia’s long-term conservation plan for its famous reef, which invests heavily in lifting water quality but is silent on climate-change action. The researchers said the findings of their paper, Global Warming and Recurrent Mass Bleaching of Corals, applied to coral reefs worldwide.

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The researchers concluded that “local management of coral reef fisheries and water quality affords little, if any, resistance to recurrent severe bleaching events: even the most highly protected reefs and near-pristine areas are highly susceptible to severe heat stress.” “On the remote northern Great Barrier Reef, hundreds of individual reefs were severely bleached in 2016 regardless of whether they were zoned as no-entry, no-fishing, or open to fishing, and irrespective of inshore–offshore differences in water quality.”

Likewise, past exposure to bleaching, or relative resistance among certain corals to minor bleaching, gave no protection in the face of severe heat stress, the study found. Local protection of fish stocks and improved water quality “may, given enough time, improve the prospects for recovery”.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/15/stopping-global-warming-is-only-way-to-save-great-barrier-reef-scientists-warn

[NickB79]

1. So, it's doomed them?

Because we sure as fuck aren't going to stop warming in our lifetimes.