Miller, S. (2022, September 2.) The Allen Coral Atlas is the First High-Res Map of All the World’s Coral Reefs, Asia & The Pacific, Conservation. Retrieved from https://www.nathab.com/blog/allen-coral-atlas/ 

 

With coral reefs, comes algae. In fact, algae actually helps coral in helping them get certain nutrients and also cleaning them. The algae has also come in to help the coral with the mass bleaching problem that nearly wiped out their whole population, that happened in 2016-2017. The way the algae helped, or tried to help before they’d leave the habitat in where the coral were, was by giving them their color, which was reversing the bleaching. They did this with the photosynthesis that was given to the other by the sun to help them grow, becoming stronger. But the bleaching got to the reefs brightness coral due to the absence in the algae, because the coral would no longer have those nutrients to help them grow and be protected, and also the vibrant colors like purple, blue, green, or red, which came from the protein pigments in the nutrients and the reflected light. From the algae they became a green-brown color. They have been able to survive na little longer due to their “…resilient…under the right conditions.”

 

The cause of the temperature rise and climate change not only affect the coral heavily but it affect the organisms around it. Like the algae, algae is found all throughout the ocean, fish tanks at home, and even aquaponics if not put in the right place. Algae is actually a short name for algae blooms, which is a bigger type of algae. Algae is known for forming many nutrients for the sea life and sea plants around them. They get built up by heavy amounts of water, fertilizers (waste), and any kind of nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen, and photosynthesis). The whole reason why they are not able to help the coral reefs anymore is because they too are leaving the environment due to the warmth of the water. Just like the coral then rise in temperature of the water causes the algae to become stressed by both helping themselves survive and the corals. The bleaching happens when the algae starts leaving the tissue of the coral, resulting in the bleaching, not death but very weak.