Handley, E., & here, P. (2022, March 11). 61% of Hawaiian coral exposed to warming conditions survive. Open Access Government. Retrieved August 28, 2022, from https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/hawaiian-coral-global-ocean-warming-climate-change/131407/
There was a 22 month study of three coral in simulated conditions to see how they would react in different conditions. They did this study because most if not all of marine life depends on coral reefs. They had four different tanks with four different conditions, one control tank with current ocean conditions; an ocean acidification condition (-0.2 pH units); an ocean warming condition (+2 degrees Celsius); and a condition that combined warming and acidification surprisingly their research revealed that 61% of coral exposed to warming conditions survived compared to the 92% exposed to current ocean temperatures.
This is super interesting because it raises the question how are some corals able to survive and others aren’t? It also gives a little hope that not everything is being destroyed so fast, it gives us more time to analyze the situation and fix the problem. I also found it interesting about the time period, at what point did the coral start getting affected.
I agree that this is super interesting, and could even be hopeful as some coral is able to survive even in warming conditions. However, I still think the difference between the amount of coral that lived in current vs. warmed conditions is significant enough that warming is going to be a severe threat. I wonder what could be done to protect coral reefs and ecosystems that depend on them?
The results of your chosen article have brought up some very alarming results regarding the current status of ocean temperatures. What do you think the future holds as a result of this evidence? Will we eventually start to notice the damage to coral reefs that we are causing?