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Surprisingly, the global coral coverage for 2010 was roughly back to pre-1998 levels. “It’s good news,” Souter says. “Even though the reefs were demolished, they were raised again.” When “old growth” corals are removed, new ones that move are often faster-growing species and weeds (as is the case with trees after a forest fire), Souter says. It’s great to have that growth, he says, but these opportunistic corals are more vulnerable to disease, heat, and storms.
The global decline has been largely trending since 2010, with corals plunging below 1998 levels. This is largely due to two other whitening events worldwide, in 2010 and 2015-2017, of which the corals have not had enough rest. There has been a small 2 per cent increase in live corals since 2019, although it is too early to say whether this could continue. “If you were a very optimistic person you would say that this happened despite the high temperature, so maybe we’re looking at adaptation,” Souter says.
In the long, stable, and healthy period of corals in the 1990s and early 2000s, the average reef was about 30 percent intense hard coral and 15 percent macroalgae like algae and grass. That’s more coral than algae. Since 2009, this proportion has dropped to about 1.5 as macroeconomic reefs have grown by 20 percent. Although algae also make a productive ecosystem, it is not the same as the complex architecture that reefs make, and it supports different fish.
It is gratifying that the East Asian Coral Triangle stands out as a bold exception. This region contains almost a third of the world’s coral reefs, and takes up abnormally more hard coral lives and less macroalgae today than in the early 1980s, despite rising water temperatures. That is believed to be appreciated genetic diversity among the 600 coral species in the region, which allows corals to adapt to warm waters. “Maybe diversity has provided some protection,” says Souter, while a healthy population of herbivorous fish and hedgehogs keeps algae down.
The other three major regions of the coral world — the Pacific Ocean, account for more than a quarter of the global; Australia, with 16 per cent; and in the Caribbean, with 10 percent, everyone takes in less coral today than when measurements began. “It’s a truly tragic and desperate case in the Caribbean,” says Voolstra, who has only about 50 coral species and new disease deleting.
Everything could be worse, Souter added. “The reefs are probably better on average than I thought,” he says. “It’s tremendous to maintain the ability of the reefs to retreat.”
In the face of punitive conditions, coral conservationists are working around the world to protect and actively restore corals from pollution. One final examination, Led by Lisa Boström-Einarsson of James Cook University in Australia, she explored the literature and discovered more than 360 coral restoration projects across 56 countries. Most coral fragments are transplanted from a place where they bloom to a place where they are struggling, or “flowering” corals in nurseries and planted. They also include innovative efforts using electricity to encourage calcification on artificial reefs (an old but still debatable idea), and to cut tiny microfragments that grow from a slow coral that grows using a diamond saw.
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