A new study from an American conservation group has shown that some coral is adapting to the warm waters of the ocean. This is considered as a positive news amid the recent reports of corals dying due to hot temperatures last year.
In this study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) published in Marine Ecology Progress Series titled "Changes in coral sensitivity to thermal anomalies," researchers have observed the responses of some corals to extremely hot temperatures over time. They found out that bleaching in the 11 of the 21 corals was now lesser than before.
The study happened in two marine national parks of Kenya by looking at two similarly extreme warming events back in 1998 and 2016. WCS Senior Conservation Zoologist Tim McClanahan, who also serves as the author of the study, discovered that the number of bleached and pale coral colonies have declined from 72 to just 27 percent and 96 to 60 percent in two parts with different background temperatures.
These changes could be attributed to about half of the most common species hat did not have strong bleaching last year. However, one rare species of corals was discovered to be more sensitive compared to its state in 1998.
In an article published in Phys.org, bleaching of corals takes place when corals are stressed and they discharge algae that could supply energy to other corals, causing them to be pale or white and starve often. Currently, 60 percent of corals and 90 percent of coral species are estimated to experience bleaching because of the unusually warm ocean water last year.
"This was a rare chance to study bleaching responses during two separate times with very similar conditions," McClanahan said. He also said that adaptation is evident for some of the reef building but unfortunately, most species are not adapting to it.
He also warned that the evidence for adaptation among corals in the past is not an evidence for adaptation in the future."Nevertheless, I suspect this adaptation to hot water started before my 1998 work and could have begun during the 1983 and 1988 El Niños when coral bleaching was first observed in the region," he said.
