Our planet’s coral reefs have been in trouble for a while, with mass bleaching events becoming more common every year. However, after record high ocean temperatures occurred all over the planet last year, experts now say that the 4th mass global bleaching event is underway and it could spell doom for these natural wonders.
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00:00Our planet's coral reefs have been in trouble for a while, with mass bleaching events becoming
00:07more common every year.
00:09However, after record-high ocean temperatures occurred all over the planet last year, experts
00:14now say that the fourth mass global bleaching event is underway, and it could spell doom
00:18for these natural wonders.
00:20Coral bleaching events occur when the marine invertebrates get stressed and expel the symbiotic
00:24algae within them.
00:26This causes them to turn white, an indicator of the problem, and they can survive if the
00:30algae returns.
00:31But that's not always the case.
00:32Here's the director of Coastal Oceans Research and Development, ecologist David Obura, to
00:37explain.
00:38So bleaching is like a fever in humans.
00:40We get a fever to resist a disease, and if the disease is not too much, we recover.
00:45But if it is too much, we die as a result.
00:47Coral exists primarily in extremely shallow waters around the planet as well.
00:51And shallow waters are far more susceptible to warming temperatures, meaning it's getting
00:55harder and harder for these reef systems to recover after a bleaching event.
00:59And coral scientist Lorenzo Alvarez-Felipe says it could take years before we see the
01:03full extent of the damage.
01:05What will happen is in the following years, depending on the species, the corals will
01:10start degrading because they are eroding.
01:14And this is when we will see the consequences.
01:17It might take even 10, 20 years to see these consequences.