A marine heatwave has broken out along more than 2,000km of the Queensland coast, raising concerns for the health of corals on the Great Barrier Reef and other ocean life.
The Bureau of Meteorology briefed the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority about the raised ocean temperatures on Friday.
A marine heatwave happens when temperatures over an area are in the hottest 10% ever recorded for that time of year and then stay there for at least five days.
Dr Alex Sen Gupta, an associate professor at the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre and marine heatwave expert, said: "If you look globally, we’re seeing more marine heatwaves now than we have ever seen before."It’s exceptional at the moment.
Dr Jessica Stella, the assistant director of reef health at GBRMPA, said there was still an element of the unknown about the effects of a heatwave in winter, when overall temperatures are cooler than in the summer.
That’s probably a mix of certain areas being 90% bleached, not the whole reef, and how it’s reported.
But rest assured, when you see news about the reef, it’s most likely not good. I posted an article the other day about a glue being developed to stick it together so it can grow again. Imagine the scale of that little undertaking.
And then we think about how a lot of the life on the oceans start at the reef… This shit is just depressing
Yeah, sorry about that. I trawl all the news basically daily for 30-1hr and this is all I can find! 80% terrible news, 20% bandaids.
Not you that has to apologize, now thats for sure