The Coral Endures
17 hours ago
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I keep reading endless hype about the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) getting bleached out of existence. So let’s start with some facts.
First, coral is not a single organism. Coral is a curious critter. Coral is a symbiotic partnership between an animal from the Anthozoa group and a microbial alga called Symbiodinium. The microbial algae use photosynthesis to create sugar, and the Anthozoa polyps feed off the sugar. Here’s a description from the USGS.
Figure 1. Description from the USGS article: “The hard skeleton of coral is formed by the secretion of calcium carbonate by the polyp. The cup-like skeleton deposited by an individual polyp is called a corallite. Polyps gather food particles with the nematocysts (stinging, venomous cells) in their tentacles, and feed from sugars produced by photosynthesizing zooxanthellae, a type of algae. The coral tissue protects these algae from herbivorous grazers, and the algae in turn use many of the polyps’ waste products such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Illustration by Laura Torresan, USGS“
Next, modern-type warm-water shallow coral reefs have been around for about half a billion years … so obviously, they must be resistant to temperature changes, including the large temperature swings in the transitions between the glacial periods and the interglacial times such as the current Holocene.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/07/13/the-coral-endures/
