Is Global Warming Going to Kill Off Coral?

[juin21]

I was talking to a friend today about the new global warming report stating that the temperature is going to raise ocean temperatures killing all the coral reefs. The cause being the rise of the average temperature of the ocean and the second being higher PH Levels. 

 

What are your thoughts? In my opinion, the rising average temperature will just cause the coral to migrate to areas of the ocean which will be the ideal temperature for them. For the PH Levels, I'm not as sure about. I've had PH swings in my tanks in the past, but how much of a PH swing will happen and is this enough to cause the coral to bleach. Your thoughts on if global warming does occur, will it kill or cause coral reefs to disappear completely or to migrate? Does anyone hazard a guess as to how much of a PH swing we are talking about?

[reeftankguy]

I don't know, all I can say is used to kill off corals all the time do to reef tank warming.

[Ryan_H]

No, it won't.  I've kept SPS in 88 degree water for months without issue.  Shallow reefs bake in the sun all day long with high immediate temps and have no issue.

 

What will kill them in a heartbeat is developing countries overusing fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides that get washed into the coastal waters.  Corals in clean water can handle a lot of bullshit.  Corals in dirty water die.

[juin21]

Hi Ryan_H, I agree, the temperature swings that occur on a daily basis near the shallow reefs can be fairly dramatic. 

[StevieT]

You hit on one thing, migration.  This is rarely if at all talked about on documentaries, articles, media.  This is the way of life and will continue.

 

Bleaching, they have no clue what actually causes it.  I've talked to quite a few off the payroll who have seen it in person and studied.  What the cameras never show is the 360° view.  You will have one area of bleaching, then next to it or just behind, nothing.  Perfectly healthy.  Same conditions, same temps.  It's like nature is controlling population.  Not saying that is it, but the instant pointing a finger for political/financial gain makes no sense.

 

Countries dumping their fert and other junk in the ocean has way more of an impact and something we can ACTUALLY change.  Well they have to change it but from a human level it's achievable.  And needs to improve.  Except if your stuck on an island.  Then ocean garbage can save your shitty solitary life.

[Hans Dorn]

Coral have survived hotter global temperature changes than what we're expecting.

 

There will be a, maybe huge, shift in the species that grow at a given location.

[Tamberav]

Idk about migration... Depends... There are other factors such as light and flow... Food... Ect that would be needed besides temp.

 

It could be multiple things effecting coral not just one thing. When you have temp stacked on pollution stacked on destruction ect.. 

[Gourami Swami]

I wouldn't be too surprised if the scientists were right about this, lol. Modern human life really is a destructive force on this planet, and unfortunately I don't think we are acting responsibly enough to save it at this rate, unless some major positive changes are made. The corals may be able to migrate in the relatively short term, however

[ahud]

What is bad is that it is hard to get a clear answer on this issue because it is so political. From everything I can find, in order for us to substantially lower carbon emissions, millions of people are going to be in poverty. Fossil fuels provide the world with affordable energy. Additionally, I don't think scientist have been accurate with their predictions. The question is what percentage of the temperature increase is caused by human activity.

 

I'm no expert. I have just kept a passing interest in this topic since a college professor tried to scare the crap out of me years ago.

 

The report the media is referring to: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/

 

A blurb from the LONG report:

"In the absence of strong natural forcing due to changes in solar or volcanic activity, the difference between total and human-induced warming is small: assessing empirical studies quantifying solar and volcanic contributions to GMST from 1890 to 2010, AR5 (Fig. 10.6 of Bindoff et al., 2013) found their net impact on warming over the full period to be less than ±0.1°C. Figure 1.2 shows that the level of human–induced warming has been indistinguishable from total observed warming since 2000, including over the decade 2006–2015. "

 

 

[RayWhisperer]

Given that the only known ice age began 33 million years ago (give or take a year or two). Then, really took a temperature downturn, maybe 3 million years ago. I don't really see how science can come up with these gloom and doom scenarios. Corals have been around since long before the cretaceous period. Which was about 150 million years of really, really warm  global averages.

 

I'm not denying coral reef bleaching is a problem. Nor am I denying human activity puts a huge strain on the environment. I'm really just questioning where these scenarios are coming from, when the vast majority of earths known history was largely ice age free. Just so we understand. An ice age is defined as a time when any part of the earth has a permanent yearly covering of ice. 

 

If we're being honest, pollution of other sorts are far more destructive. So is habitat loss. Amphibians, insects, and invertebrates, are dwindling, or dying out all over the world. None of which has anything to do with global warming. It's unfortunate to me, that some random salamander, or bug, doesnt get a thought, because it's not something pretty to look at. I swear, most of the people must think the only wildlife in the world are coral reefs and polar bears.

[Clown79]

A lot of concern is in the increased carbon dioxide that the ocean is absorbing which is causing ph to drop significantly.

 

As the ph is dropping alk is as well and corals aren't properly growing, many being smothered in algae.

 

They are also seeing cognitive behaviour, instinctual fish behaviours changing which is causing other issues.

 

Then we have the plastic problem, they are finding tons of microscopic plastic particles on corals which is impeding their growth and survival

 

Global warming is just one problem but there are many issues plaguing our oceans and reefs.

 

 

In history coral reefs were effected by many weather changes and temp changes but it was by natural causes, what's happening now on Earth essentially is being caused by factors that didn't even exist before...modern life.

[banasophia]

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Chasing Coral, available on Netflix.

 

https://www.chasingcoral.com/

 

 

[ahud]

A kid came up with a way to clean a lot of the plastic out of the water. I know he had raised a lot of money and was in the process of developing more prototypes. Seems promising if the project does not lose steam/funding. I remember him from Joe Rogan's podcast.

 

https://inhabitat.com/19-year-old-student-develops-ocean-cleanup-array-that-could-remove-7250000-tons-of-plastic-from-the-worlds-oceans/

 

Conservation is weird. The proven conservation method is incentivizing people. We see that with the aquarium trade and of course nobody raises more money than hunters for wildlife conservation. All of the bleeding heart methods only last for a short time. Like one of you mentioned, nobody cares about critters that are not cute or impressive.

 

 

[HarryPotter]

It is all Obama’s fault, he did this. 

[mitten_reef]

I do agree with some of you to a certain point, that adaptation will allow coral life forms to go on living, whether via migration or survival of the fittest.  But it will also come with a cost to the coral populations - how much effect is still up for debate.  The major problem here is the timeline and the scale of the ocean as an ecosystem, it cannot be fully anticipated by ANYONE.  The parameters, timeline, and adaptation of the ocean lives should be thought of in centuries or millennia, and these decade-long fluctuation is almost a spike in any of our tanks.  Therefore, due to these "spikes", it's gonna be hard for most life forms to adapt. 

 

We warned fellow hobbyists all the time about alk, temp, salinity, pH swings or spikes.  Well shit, our tiny system isn't even a tiny drop in a bucket, it's probably not even an aerosol, when compared to the ocean.  The type of "swings/spikes" that the ocean can see may be, rather WILL BE, drastically different than what any type of aquarium environment could ever emulate, in both the level of fluctuations AND the length of time which it takes to see effects.  To say that our tanks can sustain certain changes and fluctuations, well shit, you're also doing water changes to make correction, aren't you?  I want to see who's gonna propose a 20% water change for the ocean to bring back the parameters - once those start to deviate too far.  

 

Edit: It would be absolutely ignorant for hobbyists like ourselves to say that the ocean will be fine because our tanks can handle these "similar" changes.  There's nothing similar between our tanks and the ocean.   

 

    

 

[Oldsalt01]

Here in Florida we just experienced the worst red tide outbreak EVER. Dead Whale Sharks on the West beaches, as well as all sorts of “sports fish”. Directly attributed to fertilizer runoff and sewage discharge. 22 MILLION gallons of raw sewage dumped into the Indian River after Irma, last year. Massive fish kills due to brown algae blooms depleting O2 levels, and it doesn’t look like it will get better.  Then there’s the plastic issue on our beaches. Plastic straws are the number 3 pollutant. As the plastic breaks down it becomes micro plastic which corals consume. It blocks their gut and they stop eating because they feel full. Then they die from lack of nutrition. Until people realize everything they do has an effect on our oceans to be issue will only get worse. And if the oceans die so do we.

[A Little Blue]

If corals can adapt to crappy conditions in my tank, they can survive a little temp/ph swing. 

PS

I am with the rest of Armageddon alarmists..... let’s go back to the Stone Age and live a happy life 🤣 as I type this on my latest iphone while sitting in my AirConditioned house and watching satellite TV. 

[1.0reef]

Well we’ve more or less killed off the stony corals of the Caribbean already 

[Clown79]

On 10/11/2018 at 11:33 AM, micoastreefing said:

I do agree with some of you to a certain point, that adaptation will allow coral life forms to go on living, whether via migration or survival of the fittest.  But it will also come with a cost to the coral populations - how much effect is still up for debate.  The major problem here is the timeline and the scale of the ocean as an ecosystem, it cannot be fully anticipated by ANYONE.  The parameters, timeline, and adaptation of the ocean lives should be thought of in centuries or millennia, and these decade-long fluctuation is almost a spike in any of our tanks.  Therefore, due to these "spikes", it's gonna be hard for most life forms to adapt. 

 

We warned fellow hobbyists all the time about alk, temp, salinity, pH swings or spikes.  Well shit, our tiny system isn't even a tiny drop in a bucket, it's probably not even an aerosol, when compared to the ocean.  The type of "swings/spikes" that the ocean can see may be, rather WILL BE, drastically different than what any type of aquarium environment could ever emulate, in both the level of fluctuations AND the length of time which it takes to see effects.  To say that our tanks can sustain certain changes and fluctuations, well shit, you're also doing water changes to make correction, aren't you?  I want to see who's gonna propose a 20% water change for the ocean to bring back the parameters - once those start to deviate too far.  

 

Edit: It would be absolutely ignorant for hobbyists like ourselves to say that the ocean will be fine because our tanks can handle these "similar" changes.  There's nothing similar between our tanks and the ocean.   

 

    

 

Our Earth can repair itself from NATURAL causes. That's why in history our reefs have repaired themselves from slight temp changes, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc etc.

 

but whats effecting our Oceans now is not from natural causes, it from mankind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Little Reefer]

Whatever global warming actually is ; who knows. However , oceanianc temperatures have always been subject to change from above the ocean surface and below it. Adaptation has always been a part of evolution.So no “global warming “ will not kill off corals; it’s much more complex than that despite what so called climate experts would have us believe.