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NOAA with CRW and ICRI announces fourth worldwide mass coral bleaching event; second in last 10 years
The United States' Coral Reef Watch (CRW) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announce that the fourth worldwide catastrophic coral bleaching event will occur in 2023–2024.
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NOAA has confirmed the fourth global mass coral bleaching for 2023-2024
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This event omes at a time when global oceans have also recorded unprecedented heat
Scientists from NOAA claim that there is a global coral bleaching crisis occurring right now. This is the second global event in the past ten years and the fourth overall.
According to NOAA's Coral Reef Watch (CRW), bleaching-level heat stress has been and is still widespread in the basins of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. The sea surface temperature data used by CRW for heat-stress monitoring, which spans the years 1985 to the present, comes from a combination of NOAA and partner satellites.
The eastern Tropical Pacific (which includes Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia), the Caribbean, Brazil, Florida in the United States, the Red Sea (which includes the Gulf of Aqaba), the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, large portions of the South Pacific (which includes Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Samoas, and French Polynesia), and Australia's Great Barrier Reef have all been confirmed to be experiencing mass coral bleaching since early 2023.
Seychelles, Tromelin, and other areas to experience extensive bleaching
Numerous areas of the Indian Ocean basin, including Tanzania, Kenya, Mauritius, Seychelles, Tromelin, Mayotte, and off the western coast of Indonesia, have also been confirmed by NOAA to be experiencing extensive bleaching. Coral bleaching, particularly when it occurs widely, affects livelihoods, economies, food security, and other factors, yet it does not guarantee the death of corals. Reefs can recover and maintain the ecological services that they provide to humans, provided that the stressors causing the bleaching abate.
As a result, the NOAA CRCP funded a study by the National Academies of Sciences that resulted in the publication of the 2019 Interventions to Increase the Resilience of Coral Reefs, incorporated resilience-based management practices, and increased the emphasis on coral restoration in its 2018 strategic plan.
Florida had an unparalleled heatwave in 2023. Compared to other events in that area, it began sooner, lasted longer, and was more intense. While implementing measures to lessen damage to corals, NOAA gained a lot of knowledge during the bleaching episode. Moving coral nurseries to deeper, cooler waters and erecting sunshades to protect corals in other areas are just two of the major steps NOAA took through its Mission: Iconic Reefs programoffsite link to mitigate some of the detrimental effects of local stressors and climate change on Florida's corals.
A lot of information and lessons acquired from the 2023 maritime heatwaves in Florida and the Caribbean are being shared and applied by the worldwide Coral Reef Initiativeoffsite link (ICRI), which NOAA co-chairs, and its worldwide members. By supporting scientific research on best management methods and putting its Plan of Action into action, ICRI and its members are advancing coral treatments and restoration in the face of climate change.
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