Corals Face Bleaching Risk Again Due to Climate Event [Photos]

Another episode of coral bleaching has started making its onslaught upon the world's seas, scientists said.

A consortium of researchers around the globe and those at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that this event may likely be announced this month, based on observations of the phenomenon done in the Bahamas and Caribbean.

"This bleaching event, which began in the north Pacific in the summer of 2014 and expanded to the south Pacific and Indian oceans in 2015, is hitting U.S. coral reefs particularly hard," Mashable reported. "According to a press release, NOAA estimates that by the end of 2015, almost 95% of U.S. coral reefs will have been exposed to ocean conditions that can cause corals to bleach."

"This is only the third time we've seen what we would refer to as a global bleaching event, an event that causes mass bleaching in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Atlantic-Caribbean basin," said NOAA's Coral Reef Watch chief Mark Eakin, as noted by The Washington Post.

Previous large-scale coral bleaching events "were in 1998 and 2010, and those were pretty much one year events," Eakin explained.

"We're looking at a similar spatial scale of bleaching across the globe, but spanning across at least 2 years. So that means a lot of these corals are being put under really prolonged stress, or are being hit 2 years in a row," he continued.

Overall, the loss could cost us 5% of the corals in the world this year. Although this is not as severe as the 1998 event, if the phenomenon continues into 2016, the damage will grow.

What does coral bleaching mean to the rest of the world, aside from a loss of underwater sights?

"Coral reefs are the underwater equivalent of rainforests, and by removing the corals, you remove the trees of that underwater world," said Richard Vevers of the XL Catlin Seaview Survey.

"One in every four species of fish live on a coral reef, there are over a million species that live on coral reefs, at least two-thirds of them are pretty unknown to science," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland. "Coral reefs provide food and livelihood to 500 million people."

According to researchers, the potent combination of the El Nino phenomenon, the warm Pacific Ocean "blob," and global warming have spurred the massive coral bleaching episode. Coral bleaching happens when ocean waters become warmer than what corals are accustomed to for a longer period of time. That is because the marine organisms get stressed and "banish the symbiotic algae that provide corals with both their color and also nutrients."

"Without them, corals turn white, and become very vulnerable - thus, following bleaching, coral die-off can occur," The Washington Post said.

Researchers are currently documenting the event, collecting before and after images that can be used to create awareness and hopefully trigger a progressive response at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris in December this year.

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