July 12, 2019 — Climate change is causing a significant shift in coral reef populations as warmer ocean waters drive them away from the equator, a new scientific study has found.
The study, published this month in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, found that young corals on tropical reefs have declined 85 percent over the past four decades, while they have doubled in subtropical waters.
Climate change is the “greatest global threat” to coral reefs as mass coral bleaching and disease outbreaks become more common as the ocean warms, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But as the coral reefs come under increasing pressure from climate change, they are finding new opportunities to thrive in a changing ocean environment.
“Climate change seems to be redistributing coral reefs, the same way it is shifting many other marine species,” said Nichole Price, a senior research scientist at Maine’s Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the lead author of the paper. “The clarity in this trend is stunning, but we don’t yet know whether the new reefs can support the incredible diversity of tropical systems.”