CORAL BLEACHING - WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!
HI Steemians,
It’s currently 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit). That is HOTTTT!!! On days like this i just want to sit back, relax under an air con and eat some icecream. Sadly, my days cannot afford to be that unproductive, I still have a lot to do. Here I am, perspiring out of every single pore of my body whilst completing work that I put off doing from last year. So I decided since it is so hot here in Australia, I wanted to raise an issue about global warming here.
The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia is home to the largest variety of marine life. This biodiverse environment contains an extremely large range of fish, mollusks, turtles, crocodiles, birds and seagrass. This ecosystem is made up of numerous smaller reefs, one of which is the coral reef. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system with more than 400 species of coral.
BUT……
Human involvement in the world has changed the Great Barrier Reef drastically. Coral bleaching occurs due to various stress factors. The primary cause is the global warming increase created by humans. The warming sea temperatures and rising sea levels are caused by the increase in carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. Humans have negatively altered the coral reefs by their continuity to burn coal, oil and gas. This causes the temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef to rise by 1-2 degrees which is a major change to the coral reef system as the coral are sensitive, triggering bleaching. As the growing rate of carbon dioxide emission in the atmosphere breaks down the ozone layer, the sea level rises causing the acidification of the ocean. In the Great Barrier Reef, the water becomes more acidic and the coral dissolves as they become unable to absorb calcium. Thus, humans have impacted the physical environment of the coral in the Great Barrier Reef, causing almost all of the corals in the reef to be several damaged. Some of these species have already died out. Only 7% hasn't been bleached YET. And it’s only a matter of time before it does so.
The Great Barrier Reef is just a small portion of the world’s environment. There are other ecosystems that are unsustainable due to human impacts. It is important that we as humans change the way we utilise the physical environment and stop global warming.
Thanks for stopping by and hope you guys introduce some environmentally friendly daily habits into your lifestyle.
Great post, @betrayerx! As I said in my reply to your comment earlier, Great Barrier Reef is one of the places where global warming has hit the hardest so far, and we're still only at the beginning of seeing the consequences of it. It's great that you raise awareness about this!
A little digression from your main point, but wow, that's incredible! Here in Norway it is -20 right now. I can't believe that it's 63 degrees hotter where you are.
This is so terrible. Most people think only a small part has been bleached, but it is in fact the other way around; only a small part is still healthy.
Yeah it gets pretty hot here in Australia, after all it's a desert. But we've never gotten to minus degrees where I live and i would suppose in Norway its the opposite (correct me if I'm wrong). I can't believe that most of the marine life has been affected due to the just a few changes in temperatures. The temperatures are continuing to stay at a constant few degrees higher than the usual, meaning that the marine life haven't been able to recover for the past few years. This leads to greater damage in coral.
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Thanks, but I didn't take the photo, it was sourced off the internet.
this a good read. we have this documentary of the Great Barrier Reef from BBC and my whole family been watching it over and over again. This is miracle. We love the seas, the corals and the fish of course everybody does, but our love is more than the average. Hope people learn and adjust and be less contributor to global warming. good work @betrayerx
am following you now. peace out!
Thanks for checking in, I agree with you and think that we need to raise awareness for people to change their behaviours.
you know what annoys me most? seeing people in the beach holding starfish for photo ops... modernization and commercialization are killing them all. :(
i think people just don't understand and don't know about the dangers they cause to marine life when they disturb them. We should continue to educate people on how to handle marine life. This can get annoying sometimes too. I think people just need to go visit places where marine life are constantly endangered and are washed up to shore to really get it.