SYDNEY, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- Researchers at James Cook University and other institutions in Australia recently published a paper in the semi-monthly journal of Contemporary Biology in the United States, saying that in the past 20 years, climate change and the resulting warming of seawater have caused serious harm to the Great Barrier Reef, during which only about 2% of the Great Barrier Reef corals can avoid bleaching.
Corals have colors derived from the symbiotic seaweeds in their bodies. When the water temperature rises or the pH changes, the seaweed decreases and the coral gradually turns white. If the environment cannot be restored, the corals may even die.
The first author of the paper, James Cook University Australian Research Council Coral Reef Research Demonstration Centre Professor Terry Hughes told Xinhua news agency reporters that they used data on the Great Barrier Reef's five large-scale bleaching events in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020 to assess the location and extent of ingestion in the entire Great Barrier Reef and found that only about 2% of the Great Barrier Reef corals have "evaded" bleaching since 1998.
The study also found that about 80 percent of Great Barrier Reef corals were severely bleached in three years, 2016, 2017 and 2020. Corals that have not experienced sea heating are more vulnerable to sea heating than corals that have previously experienced sea heating.
The researchers say that multiple disruptors brought about by climate change interact with each other, making it often difficult to predict the impact on corals based on a single event.
The Great Barrier Reef is the umbrella term for a series of coral island reefs off the northeast coast of Australia and is the world's largest coral reef group, stretching for more than 2,000 kilometres and home to more than 1,500 species of fish.
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