Coral disease linked to warming

An international team of scientists working on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has found a clear link between coral disease and warmer ocean temperatures.

Worldfirst research at 48 reefs spread along 1500 kilometres of the GBR combined with 6 years of satellite data on sea temperatures has revealed “a highly significant relationship” between ocean warming and the emergence of a disease known as white syndrome.

White syndrome is one of a number of unexplained coral diseases which scientists have observed to be on the increase globally in recent years.

The team led by Dr John Bruno of the University of North Carolina, Dr Bette Willis of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University and Dr Hugh Sweatman of the Australian Institute of Marine Science has published an open access report on their findings in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Biology on the internet.

“Coral reefs have been decimated over the last several decades on a global scale. Infectious diseases are thought to contribute to this mass coral mortality in reef regions like the Caribbean, and many reef ecologists suspected that high ocean temperatures were a key factor in the increased incidence and severity of disease outbreaks, Dr Willis says.

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