IT IS now certain that coral reefs are being damaged by global climate
change, the Bali meeting heard last week.
The first warning signs came from bleaching, which occurs when warmer waters
force corals to expel their symbiotic algae. During the 1997-1998 El
Niño, reefs bleached throughout the world, and there were mass deaths of
coral in the Caribbean. Now cores drilled from Caribbean reefs off Belize show
that nothing like this has happened for at least 3000 years.
“This is the first palaeontological evidence that directly links the new
bleaching-related mass mortality to global warming,” says Rich Aronson…
