PPT Slide

Bleaching incidents, 1998

Notes:

Deep blue dots - High ᡪ% of corals observed to bleach
Pale blue dots - Medium 10-50% of corals bleached
Yellow dots - Low ᝺% of corals bleached.
In the central Indian Ocean from the Maldives to the Seychelles - massive levels of bleaching became the largest mass-mortality event ever recorded.
These three countries have some 5% of the world’s coral reefs and some 90% of their corals died.
To get these figures in perspective it can be directly compared to forests. Europe has some 4% of the world’s forest ecosystems. Corals are in many ways the ecological equivalent to trees, to we might suggest that this is similar to Europe losing 90% of its trees.
Recovery has now commenced on these reefs, but it will be many years without further impacts before such recovery will be complete.
Most models point to sea temperatures reaching the thresholds for coral bleaching with increasing regularity - possibly every year within 30 years.