Coral bleaching is what happens when coral is subjected to sudden changes in temperature – or any drastic change in their environment for that matter, including changes in UV exposure, salinity levels, opacity of the water, or fluctuating levels of ‘free-floating’ nutrients in the water. Add Climate Change to that list, too.
They ‘bleach’ in color because they themselves don’t actually HAVE any color – the algae and ‘zooxanthellae’ that live within their tissues do – so when they get stressed out they eject those organisms out of their structure.
Even worse, the bleaching doesn’t stop after the stress-period has ended. It keeps going for a while. If the coral manages to survive the bleaching episode, it can take months for the symbiotic organisms to return. Think of it this way… the coral provides the housing structure and safety for the algae and ‘zooxs’, while the algae and zooxs provide the coral with nutrients. No critters, no nutrients, no color, no living coral.
A widespread cold-water coral die-off has not occurred in Florida since the late 1970s. While all coral species were affected, the impact of the cold water was very distinct from location to location. Corals within 100 meters 328 feet of each other experienced 10- to 15-degree Fahrenheittemperature differences.
If you haven’t seen ‘The Cove’, it’s a bout the annual dolphin hunt/roundup in the Japanese village of Taiji.
Dolphins are mammals, not fish. In my mind they’re intelligent creatures several steps above the cold-blooded vertebrates inhabiting the rest of the ocean.
I don’t care what kind of history or culture you have, such brutality towards an intelligent species is reprehensible. There’s no rational market for these dolphins – as in there’s no sustained year-round demand for dolphin meat even within Japanese culture, so the argument of ‘tradition’ is flimsy at best.
I agree with the article that if the Japanese public at large is finally allowed to see the film (that’s right, it still hasn’t been released in Japan) there’ll be quite a few minds changed on the subject. The mayor of Taiji stated that “There are different food traditions within Japan and around the world.” Fair enough – but the Japanese make sushi a staple of their diet, not dolphin tartare.
Well, it’s a double edged sword. No-take zones are marine areas that are protected from fishing… usually this means no trawling, cyanide-bombing, etc.
Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) such as these always show a quick bounce-back in biodiversity and fish populations, but apparently so much so to the point that that the protected areas become an irresistible temptation to poachers.
“The resounding pattern overall is there are more and bigger fish in the protected areas than the fished areas,” said Dr McCook, of GBRMPA and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
“Bigger fish have more babies. The increase spills over into the fished areas.”
At a recent Project AWARE cleanup – which was an out of water event to help pick up garbage – we noticed a group of student divers engaged in a class out in the lake. They were all standing in a rough circle on a submerged platform which is approximately 3 or 4 feet underwater. One person of our group commented on how the dive instructor wasn’t really doing much with them, much less keeping an eye on all of them. The general consensus was, “too many students, not enough instructors”.
The students were wearing one-piece wetsuits (couldn’t tell what thickness, but probably 5mm or 7mm – hopefully the later) with hoods and gloves, while the instructor was in a nice comfy drysuit. The water temperature was approximately 48 degrees. BRRRRR! We later learned that they were on their second dive session, having finished their first and then gone back into the water without ever drying off or warming up. In other words, they were performing back to back dives in some VERY cold water.
Once all the students finally got out of the water from their second lesson, you could easily see that they were all shivering – but one of them was actually SHAKING. It didn’t take long until two DiveMasters I was with on the garbage cleanup (not diving) realized that the diver was suffering from hypothermia. They basically swooped into action and most likely saved the diver’s life.
Hypothermia is a medical emergency that occurs when your body loses heat faster than it can produce heat, causing a dangerously low body temperature. Normal body temperature is around 98.6 F (37 C). Hypothermia (hi-po-THUR-me-uh) occurs as your body temperature passes below 95 F (35 C).
When your body temperature drops, your heart, nervous system and other organs cannot work correctly. Left untreated, hypothermia eventually leads to complete failure of your heart and respiratory system and to death.
Hypothermia is most often caused by exposure to cold weather or immersion in a cold body of water. Primary treatments are methods to warm the body back to a normal temperature. – Mayoclinic.com
One thing that amazed me was that his buddies that were diving with him didn’t, and likely STILL don’t, realize just how serious the situation was. One of the DiveMasters that intervened is an EMT… he told us later that the kid had dilated pupils and no measurable pulse in his arm at one point. Just as amazing as the nonchalance of his friends was (and this is just my personal opinion as I don’t actually know the instructor in question) the apparent ignorance of the student’s dive instructor. The instructor took little to no responsibility for that kid, and shortly after my acquaintances and I had carted the kid off for emergency treatment, he was back down at the lake instructing other students.
Don’t ever go to a SCUBA shop that is all about cranking people through a program in the shortest period of time possible!!! Get to know your instructors, search for reviews about their shop on the web or in various forums and clubs. Educate yourself! You never know when your life is going to be in someone else’s hands.
I managed to capture a short video of the distressed diver just after he exited the water:
Reefhugger is a combination of things: My own little holding bin of information related to SCUBA and reef preservation that I find interesting, and A way of getting the word out to the world about matters related to coral reefs, SCUBA diving, and ocean systems conservancy in general. There’s plenty of websites out there that [...]more →
