Erik StokstadJust a few degrees of heat can “bleach” corals, putting them on a path to starvation and death. Driven by climate change, marine heat waves are becoming one of the greatest threats to the existence of tropical reefs.
But in some rare good news, researchers have discovered some corals can recover from bleaching even before a heat wave ends, suggesting they have the potential to survive long heat waves.“That gives us a pathway to coral recovery that we wouldn’t necessarily have imagined before,” says Steve Palumbi, a marine ecologist at Stanford University who was not involved in the research.
In addition, the research suggests reducing water pollution and other stresses can make reefs more resilient to the shocks of climate.