After numerous media reports said the #Great Barrier Reef was dead from #Climate Change, reef divers wanted to correct the record: coral bleaching doesn’t mean death. Last month, researchers led by the ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies said that many regions of this natural wonder were dead and global warming was at fault. Now they’re back with even more dreadful news.
The government-funded ARC group, led by Professor Terry Hughes, recently completed aerial surveys to determine if the damage was centralized or spread across the 1,400-mile-long structure. The group was also behind many of the misleading headlines sounding the reef’s premature death knell last month. Bleaching, as many experts point out, is not the same as mortality, and can’t be determined from the cockpit of an airplane.
The surveys that Hughes conducted can’t distinguish what caused the ghosting of the corals. To determine the cause, divers need to do an up-close examination to determine if the bleaching was from storm damage, crown-of-thorns starfish (their number one predator), sea level rise, or warmer water. The flyovers actually indicate the most likely cause was from low tides and falling sea levels.
Bleaching doesn’t equal death
Aerial surveys also can’t determine if the coral is really dead. That’s what divers, who run and own tour operations on the reef, are worried about. The executive director of the Marine Park Tourism Operators Col McKenzie said that some sites frequented by tourists have been hit hard by bleaching and emphasized the coral wasn’t dead and would likely recover.
“People are equating bleaching with death,” McKenzie told Australia’s Cairns-Post. “Well, it doesn’t quite work that way.” Because coral lives a few feet below the surface, aerial surveys don’t capture the full extent of a reef’s health, giving a false impression of widespread ghosting.
McKenzie said Far North Queenslanders need to let other people know what the true effects of bleaching
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Via: https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/coral-reef-sophistry/
Almost everytime I look into an alarmist’s claim, there is an easy to identify natural cause of the observation.
The arctic sea ice is greatly impacted by the wind direction, storms and warm water entering the arctic. None of which are due to CO2.
Polar bears are doing just great, so there is no issue there.
The Mt Kilimanjaro Glacier is disappearing due to sublimation, not warming.
The global temperatures are relatively stable if the urban heat island effect and temperature station location are controlled for. This is supported by “unadjusted” long term thermometer records.
Frying an egg on a sidewalk
Declining bee population
Water vapor causes lower tropospheric temperatures, not CO2.
Now we have an explanation for Great Barrier Reef bleaching. El Ninos and El Ninas alter the sea level of the reefs, and the lower the sea level exposing the coral. Coral is shallow water tend to bleach. Not due to CO2, but due to exposure. Put almost anything out in direct sunlight and it will turn white. No CO2 needed.
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Guest essay by Jim Steele Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism It is puzzling why the recent 2017 publication in Nature, Global Warming And Recurrent Mass Bleaching Of Corals by Hughes et al. ignored the most critical factor affecting…
Source: Falling Sea Level: The Critical Factor in 2016 Great Barrier Reef Bleaching!…
Should be considered along with the recent study on the effects of “dead zones” on coral reefs. Read about dead zones and coral reefs. The media release for the microbe study is below. ### Land-based microbes may be invading and harming coral reefs AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MICROBIOLOGY A new study suggests that coral reefs–already under … Continue reading More ‘settled science’… land-based microbes harming coral reefs
Source: More ‘settled science’… land-based microbes harming coral reefs…
Not global warming. Not ocean acidification. Key quotes: … they suspected it was caused by a dead zone–a low-oxygen area that snuffs out marine life–rather than by ocean warming or acidification… The team thinks that such dead zones may be common in the tropics but have gone largely unreported, simply because scientists never looked… Based … Continue reading Oops… ‘scientists’ overlooked effect of ‘dead zones’ on coral reefs
Source: Oops… ‘scientists’ overlooked effect of ‘dead zones’ on coral reefs…
A team of divers is pushing back on a so-called second mass bleaching event occurring on the #Great Barrier Reef, which media reports said affected 50 to 60 percent of Cape York region. Scientists from the government-funded ARC center also found a 35 percent mortality rate, with an ultimate death toll topping 90 percent. That’s prompted local dive operators, who physically visit the reef each day, to survey the hardest hit parts. They only found between one and five percent damage.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which oversees the 1,250-mile-long structure, also added on their website there were still a great many reefs with abundant living coral for tourists to view, but it was imperative the world acts and carries out the “Paris Climate Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
The local divers, however, used their own money and spent two weeks surveying 28 sites on 24 outer reef shelves ARC said were decimated. They found the reefs looked identical to how they did twenty years ago. Despite alarmist headlines of a mass bleaching event, they found no changes in two decades. They said the discrepancy between what they found (five percent damage) and what was being reported was “phenomenal.”
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#Sovereignty DELINGPOLE: Great Barrier Reef Still Not Dying, Whatever Washington Post Says… http://washingtonstarnews.ga/3Fn 👈 see here 🇺🇸 RT 🔁
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Crown-of-thorns starfish
Other reef threats include the crown-of-thorns starfish. This starfish feeds on coral polyps, which are needed for new coral colonies to grow. The starfish population has exploded since the early ’60’s when its chief predator, the Pacific triton, was devastated by shell hunters. Since then, the starfish has wiped out many of the central reefs. The corals survive through a symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae, which gives them their vibrant colors.
Marine Park Authority Director of Reef Recovery Dr. David Wachenfeld said local weather conditions will also define the final outcome of the dying or bleached coral or lack thereof. More importantly, Wachenfeld said, not all bleached coral will die. He said last year’s bleaching and mortality were highly variable across the 133,000-square-mile Marine Park, which is bigger than Italy.…
Also see: We’re finding new coral reefs everywhere…
Wait, wait – someone made an assumption that carbon life forms would not like more carbon, and that they might not be able to adjust to a change even after surviving for 100 million years of other changes. But now researchers are surprised that some shells are not only as good in an “acidic environment” but might be even better. Indeed formanifera turned out to micromanage pH levels so that in the right spot, where they need a higher pH, they can create that. The researchers say “such an active biochemical regulation mechanism has never been found before” and wonder “what if” the majority of organisms can do this?
More carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air also acidifies the oceans. It seemed to be the logical conclusion that shellfish and corals will suffer, because chalk formation becomes more difficult in more acidic seawater. But now a group of Dutch and Japanese scientists discovered to their own surprise that some tiny unicellular shellfish make better shells in an acidic environment. This is a completely new insight.
Researchers from the NIOZ (Royal Dutch Institute for Sea Research) and JAMSTEC (Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) found in their experiments that so-called foraminifera might even make their shells better in more acidic water. These single-celled foraminifera shellfish occur in huge numbers in the oceans. The results of the study are published in the leading scientific journal Nature Communications.
Since 1750 the acidity of the ocean has increased by 30%.
Well… at least in theory. (Number of pH meters in 1750 = 0.) Models predict the oceans have become less alkaline.
According to the prevailing theory and related experiments with calcareous algae and shellfish, limestone (calcium carbonate) dissolves more easily in acidic water. The formation of lime by shellfish and corals is more difficult because less carbonate is available under acidic conditions. The carbonate-ion relates directly to dissolved carbon dioxide via two chemical equilibrium reactions.
Self-regulating biochemical magic trick
The classical theory is based on purely chemical processes by which the rate at which lime is created is determined entirely by the acidity of the water. NIOZ researcher and shared first author Lennart de Nooijer: “In our experiments the foraminifera were regulating the acidity at the micro level. In the places where shell formation occurs, the acidity was substantially lower than …
by Jim Steele
Although some researchers have raised concerns about possible negative effects of rising CO2 on ocean surface pH, there are several lines of evidence demonstrating marine ecosystems are far more sensitive to fluxes of carbon dioxide from ocean depths and the biosphere’s response than from invasions of atmospheric CO2. There is also ample evidence that lower pH does not inhibit photosynthesis or lower ocean productivity (Mackey 2015). On the contrary, rising CO2 makes photosynthesis less costly.
Furthermore in contrast to researchers arguing rising atmospheric CO2 will inhibit calcification, increased photosynthesis not only increases calcification, paradoxically the process of calcification produces CO2 and drops pH to levels lower than predicted by climate change models. A combination of warmer tropical waters and coral reef biology results in out-gassing of CO2 from the ocean to the atmosphere, making coral reefs relatively insensitive to the effects of atmospheric CO2 on ocean pH.
Sixty million years ago proxy evidence indicates ocean surface pH hovered around 7.4. If surface pH was in equilibrium with the atmosphere, then CO2 concentrations would have hovered around 2000 ppm, but there is no consensus that CO2 reached those levels. However as will be discussed, there are biological processes that do lower surface pH to that extent, despite much lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations.…
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Despite worries, some coral reefs ‘doing much better than we anticipated’
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/17/despite-worries-some-coral-reefs-doing-much-better-than-we-anticipated/
From the ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE IN CORAL REEF STUDIES and the “Nature always finds a way” department Bright spots shine light on the future of coral reefs Researchers have discovered a handful of ‘bright spots’ among the world’s embattled coral reefs, offering the promise of a radical new approach to conservation. In one of…
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