From: *Akbar Syahputra*
(Reuters) - A dramatic spike in ocean temperatures off Indonesia's Aceh
province has killed large areas of coral and scientists fear the event
could be much larger than first thought and one of the worst in the
region's history.
The coral bleaching -- whitening due to heat driving out the algae
living within the coral tissues -- was first reported in May after a
surge in temperatures across the Andaman Sea from the northern tip of
Sumatra island to Thailand <http://www.reuters.com/places/thailand> and
Myanmar.
An international team of scientists studying the bleaching event found
that 80 percent of some species have died since the initial assessment
in May.
More coral colonies were expected to die within the next few months and
that could spell disaster for local communities reliant on the reefs for
food and money from tourism.
"I would predict that what we're seeing in Aceh, which is extraordinary,
that similar mortality rates are occurring right the way through the
Andaman Sea," said Andrew Baird of James Cook University in Townsville,
in the Australian state of Queensland.
If so, that would make it the worst bleaching recorded in the region,
said Baird.
Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Syiah Kuala
University in Aceh have also been assessing the damage.
"This one of the most rapid and severe coral mortality events ever
recorded," the U.S.-based WCS said in a statement.
It also fits a pattern of climate extremes, from heatwaves to flooding,
that have hit many areas of the globe this year.
Between April and late May, sea surface temperatures in the Andaman Sea
rose to 34 degrees Celsius or about 4 degrees C above the long-term
average, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Coral Hotspots website. (See: here
<http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/cb/hotspots.html> )
SLOW RECOVERY
"Similar mass bleaching events in 2010 have now been recorded in Sri
Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and many parts of Indonesia," the WCS
statement said.
Baird, of James Cook University's ARC Center of Excellence for Coral
Reef Studies, told Reuters that climate change could have played a role
in the extreme ocean temperatures around Aceh.
"There might be one of these cyclic climate phenomena driving it but
it's much more severe than you would predict unless there was something
else forcing it, which is almost certainly global warming," he told
Reuters on Tuesday.
The bleaching is a blow to local communities in Aceh still recovering
from the 2004 tsunami. That disaster caused relatively little damage to
reefs and Baird said some areas had showed a dramatic recovery.
Baird said reefs in Indonesia would normally take 5 to 10 years to
recover from localized bleaching. But if the event was spread across a
much wider area, recovery would take longer.
"I suspect the scale of this event is so large there is unlikely to be
many healthy reefs in the rest of Aceh."
(Editing by Nick Macfie)
http://www.sustainablewaters.com/7e0
