By Jim Steele
A coral survey ending in May 2022 found that despite decades of worrisome bleaching the northern and central Great Barrier Reef recorded their highest amount of coral cover since the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) began monitoring 37 years ago.
Bleaching does not mean coral mortality. Bleaching may result in death or in improved adaptiveness. Despite some 2020 and 2022 bleaching, coral mortality declined. AIMS’ Annual Summary Report on Coral Reef Condition for 2022/23 found despite insignificant declines in 2023, “regional hard coral cover was similar to that [historical maximum coral cover] reported in 2022.”
When evaluating a chef, the proof is in the pudding. This coral recovery finds the climate alarmists’ coral extinction pudding to be quite putrid. It refutes decades of gloom and doom predictions by so-called coral experts, and chicken little pronouncements that the Great Barrier Reef was dead or dying.
Click-bait media and high impact journals, like Nature, had been promoting the dire predictions of a few researchers, like Dr Hoegh-Guldberg, who blamed CO2 warming for most bleaching and stated, “The rapidity and extent of the changes, if realized, spell catastrophe for tropical marine ecosystems everywhere, and suggest that unrestrained warming cannot occur without the complete loss of coral reefs on a global scale.”
But there are many causes for bleaching and warming. As an ecologist, it was painfully obvious that CO2 warming was overly hyped while other critical factors affecting coral reefs were being downplayed.
Hoegh-Guldberg also assumed bleaching was evidence that coral had reached their limit of maximum thermal tolerance, despite having evolved during the Age of Dinosaurs when CO2 was around 2000 ppm and temperatures were much warmer. So he incorrectly argued coral cannot adapt quickly enough to temperatures projected by climate models.
Hoegh-Guldberg and other alarmists dismissed the Adaptive Bleaching Hypothesis, and the growing multitude of genetic studies showing that coral rapidly evolve by shuffling and shifting their symbiotic algae to maximize survival in an ever evolving environment.
To provide the public with a more complete scientific understanding, in May 2016 I blogged the article The Coral Bleaching Debate: Is Bleaching the Legacy of a Marvelous Adaptation Mechanism or A Prelude to Extirpation?
I wanted to highlight the ongoing scientific debate in the peer-reviewed literature that was not being presented by the media because it contradicted fear mongering articles solely blaming CO2 warming. The article was posted to Watts Up With That and on Dr.Judith Curry’s blog, and then garnered additional attention when The Australian’s Graham Lloyd printed a few excerpts from the essay as an alternative viewpoint to the extinction hysteria. That caught the attention of the alarmist Australian Broadcasting Company and Media Watch which attacked Graham Lloyd and denigrated me. Instead of refuting a single shred of science, ABC and Hoegh-Guldberg denigrated me as a denier and mere “bird enthusiast” who was ignorant about coral.
However, my carefully researched article simply pointed out that bleaching is induced by various stressful interactions. Coral need to adapt to cold as well as warmth, as seen in the bleaching of coral during Florida’s 2010 cold snap. Because coral must adapt to many variable factors, coral shuffle and shift their symbiotic algae, to impart an amazing ability to immediately adapt to current conditions. Coral expel old symbiotic algae, bleach, and then acquire new ones. This symbiont shuffling and shifting has enabled coral to survive for 200 million years!
Events like El Nino had induced widespread bleaching and high mortality as observed during the 1981-1982 and 1998-1999 El Ninos. The 2016 El Nino event produced the worst bleaching event yet observed in the northern Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, it also prompted researchers like Dr. Terry Hughes to opportunistically argue it was more proof of the devastation by CO2 warming. But like Hoegh-Guldberg, Hughes was ignoring other critical factors.
So I posted another article, Falling Sea Level: The Critical Factor in 2016 Great Barrier Reef Bleaching!
explaining how dynamics other than CO2 heated water and caused bleaching. I reported that researchers had observed falling regional sea levels for the past 6 years, exposing and killing coral on reef crests due to more prolonged above-water exposure during low tides. Sea level fell further during the 2016 El Nino, which amplified solar heating of shallow lagoons and reef flat waters because the tides could no longer flush the reef flats with cooler deeper ocean waters. As a result, coral in reef flats and shallow lagoons suffered the greatest bleaching and mortality, while the outer reefs experienced minimal bleaching.
Now, the coral have recovered as sea-level has risen again re-creating habitat for fast-growing coral to re-colonize. The increase in coral cover was also enabled by coral’s ability to shuffle and shift their symbiotic algae and acquire more heat tolerant symbiotic algae .
That recovery exonerates my previous analyses and the analyses of many other climate skeptics, who dared to challenge the gloom and doom of CO2 driven coral extinction.
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