Coral Bleaching Research Paper

Coral reefs face numerous different stresses due to climate changes. One of the main stresses people witness are due to ocean acidification. Acidification is where the pH of seawater is reduced due to high levels of CO2. This is caused due to the high temperatures related to global warming. The temperature of the sea surface can cause major effects corals. When the temperature increase to a significant amount, people begin to examine things like bleaching to the reefs. Coral bleaching often causes a major die off, of reefs which can lead to bio-erosion (High CO2). When this situation begins to occur, we tend to notice much lower rates of coral within specific regions. Key West has been shown to have large scales of bleaching near the early …show more content…
Several coral reefs face disease, invasive species and even algae over growth. So how exactly do these things effect the reef? Disease in a coral reef can be caused by a few different reasons. Several of which seem to always link back to climate change. The main disease a reef face is due to bleaching. The coral changes its whole structure and begins to lose density until it dies off. This keeps it from being a living habitat and food source to other living organisms. The bleaching is also really bad for the marine ecosystem due to the fact corals protect our coastline. They often do this by reducing wave impact of tropic storms. (Reef building …show more content…
Invasive species are well known for consuming bits of coral as food. They are also known for grazing the algae, which lives upon the reefs. These algae play a very important part in maintaining the overall health of a coral reef. Invasive species graze the algae until there is usually little to none left. That’s when they move on to their next potion of algae covered reed to continue the process. Various corals near Florida have shown major decreases in coral growth due to herbivory. () Herbivory is another leading cause to coral bleaching and disease. Invasive species have also been linked to algae overgrowth. With climate change, water temperatures have begun to increase, leaving more species to enter and leave the areas they are most familiar with. This has lead to an increase in algae

Show More