yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Coral Bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef | Years of Living Dangerously


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

This year is the warmest on record, and with ocean temperatures reaching dangerously high levels, a major coral bleaching event is predicted to hit the Great Barrier Reef. It's a race against time to document these reefs before climate change alters conditions. Here, the XL Catlin C View survey uses cameras to take high numbers of 360° photographs of the bottom of the sea, effectively mapping the sea floor, like Google Street View maps land. With this technology, scientists are able to establish a baseline for the coral reefs so that after a bleaching event, they can figure out how much was actually lost.

It's part of the largest visual stock take of corals on the planet ever done. After today's dives, I'm actually feeling hopeful—the reefs here are thriving. But then I learned my optimism may be misplaced. Ove has footage from other reefs around the world, and he says what's happening there will eventually happen here too.

Now, this is largely a healthy reef right now. If you look at a reef that's under stress, like this one here, and there's bleaching all over the place, right? That's what all these white patches are. That's right; it looks like it's snowed underwater. Some of that might recover if it gets cooler sooner, but a lot of that will die either directly or it'll die of starvation or disease.

So, if you look at the healthy reef on the left-hand side, with reefs that have now started to bleach, like the one on the right, and we're talking—wow, wow! That's only a couple of months of it being under that stress. It is surprising to see how quickly it happens; that is shocking.

The first time people saw, you know, a mass bleaching event was in the early 1980s—never before then. But in 1998, we had the first global event. Then you go to 2010, and it happens again. 2015, 2016, and it's happening again. All that while, it appears that the interval between these events is shortening and their intensity is increasing. We're now in the third global mass bleaching event. This year, we had very warm conditions coming into the summer, plus a strong El Niño, and that then pushed sea temperatures, you know, right to the limit over most of the reef.

More Articles

View All
Finding zeros of polynomials (example 2) | Mathematics III | High School Math | Khan Academy
So I have the polynomial ( p(x) ) here, and ( p(x) ) is being expressed as a fourth degree polynomial times ( (3x - 8)^2 ). So this would actually give you some, this would give you ( 9x^2 ) and a bunch of other stuff, and then you multiply that times thi…
r-selected and K-selected population growth strategies | High school biology | Khan Academy
What we’re going to do in this video is talk about different population growth strategies for different species and think about if we can come up with a broad categorization or if there’s a broad categorization already out there for us. We see that there…
Proof: Matrix determinant gives area of image of unit square under mapping | Matrices | Khan Academy
The goal of this video is to feel good about the connection that we’ve talked about between the absolute value of the determinant of a two by two matrix and the area of the parallelogram that’s defined by the two column vectors of that matrix. So, for ex…
The Angel Philosopher Naval Ravikant on Reading, Making Decisions, Habits, and the Purpose of Life
[Music] Hey, it’s Shane Parrish, and welcome to a new episode of The Knowledge Project, where we deconstruct actionable strategies that you can use to make better decisions, learn new things, and live a better life. This time around, we have the amazing N…
The Universe's Biggest Paradoxes
Has anyone ever accused you of acting like you’re the center of the universe? Maybe you were 10 years old, upset that your mom wouldn’t take you to buy candy, or you were so focused on an upcoming project that you totally forgot to wish your coworker cong…
The Nightcrawlers Trailer | National Geographic
(ambient music) [President Duterte] In my country, there’s three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them to finish the problem. (tense music) [Female News Anchor] Officers have repeatedly been accused of hunting down and executing people, …