Warming Sea Temps and Coral Bleaching

Sea Change Radio

With summer heat fast-approaching, it's a good reminder that the planet's oceans are warming fast too. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Elizabeth Alberts, a senior staff reporter at Mongabay about coral bleaching. We discuss how coral bleaching affects marine life, learn about bleaching events, and look at the various ways that coral reefs react to warming sea temperatures. Then, we re-visit part of our 2023 conversation with Jeff Stoike, of Blue Action Lab, as he describes his organization’s efforts to protect fragile aquatic environments. Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise. Elizabeth Alberts (EA) | 00:16 - It's a ray of hope. So maybe something can be done with using this coral or figuring out, you know, what makes this coral special. Like what are the elements of this coral that, that make it so resistant to heat? Narrator | 00:30 - With summer heat fast approaching, it's a good reminder that the planets oceans are warming fast too. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Elizabeth Alberts, a senior staff reporter at Monga Bay about Coral Bleaching. We discuss how Coral Bleaching affects marine life, learn about bleaching events, and look at the various ways that coral reefs react to warming sea temperatures. Then we revisit our 2023 conversation with Jeff Stoike of Blue Action Lab as he describes his organization's efforts to protect fragile aquatic environments. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:18 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Elizabeth Alberts. Elizabeth is a senior staff writer at Mongabay and works on their ocean desk. Elizabeth, welcome to Sea Change Radio. Elizabeth Alberts (EA) | 01:30 - Thank You. Thanks for having me. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:31 - So we're talking to you from outside of Brussels, Belgium, is that correct? Elizabeth Alberts (EA) | 01:35 Yes. AW | 01:37 - So you don't have a lot of coral reefs close to Belgium, but it's one of the issues that you've been covering quite effectively for Mongabay. I'd like to discuss this piece that you wrote last month entitled "Global Coral Bleaching now underway looks set to be largest on record." It seems like this is the new normal, kind of like breaking heat records. We're going to see a lot of these type of stories, unfortunately. What are some of the areas that you, as a science reporter are looking at to see where the needle is moving and, and what are some of the big events that environmentalists should be looking at when they analyze the coral reef system In our, in our oceans? EA | 02:22 - Well, we should just be looking at ocean heat, uh, I mean ocean heating and see temperature rise and Coral Bleaching is just a result of, of these, this rise in global temperatures, which has been, you know, it's, it's it's sea temperatures have been going up every year. This year there is a dynamic with, or there has been since last year with a, with the El Nino climate pattern, and it's causing all sorts of fluctuations and just crazy temperatures. So what's happening now is the fourth Global Coral Bleaching event. And, um, yeah, it's not looking good. I mean, you can look at the NOAA bleaching alerts there, and, and you'll, you'll see a lot of the, the really dark red, uh, they have different levels for the type of bleaching, uh, or, or not the bleaching. It actually measures the, the seat, um, the temperature of, of the sea. So it doesn't necessarily mean that bleaching is happening there, but there's usually it means there's a very strong likelihood that bleaching is happening there. And then if you look at another tool called the Allen Coral Atlas, they use another way of measuring Coral Bleaching, which is measuring whiteness. And if you look at these maps, the reason I'm talking about this is because if you look at these maps now, it's just everywhere. It's absolutely everywhere. There aren't a lot of, well, there are some places that are,