Indonesian conservationist Nyoman Sugiarto has been working for 16 years to preserve coral on the reefs of Bali, but the frequency of mass coral bleachings he says is now devastating.
Ninety percent of the corals Sugiarto had nurtured on the reefs near his village in Bondalem, in northern shore of Bali, lost their color last December.
"It was all white. We were shocked and of course, it also negatively affected the coral we planted. It's not just the natural ones," 51-year-old Sugiarto told Reuters.
When Sugiarto began coral conservation projects in 2008 he was told that coral could retain the living algae which gives it color for 10 to 20 years.
Yet, the coral reefs off Bondalem were bleached in less than 10 years, he says, blaming warmer sea temperatures triggered by climate change.
Coral bleaching occurs when coral expels the colorful algae living in its tissues. Without the algae the coral becomes pale and vulnerable to starvation, disease or death.
In April, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said more than 54% of the reef areas in the world's oceans are experiencing bleaching-level heat stress, the fourth global bleaching event in the last three decades.
Indonesia has roughly 5.1 million hectares of coral reefs and accounts for 18% of the world's total, data from the country's tourism ministry showed.
Coral bleaching in Bali in late 2023 was mainly caused by rising sea temperatures caused by the El Nino phenomenon that hit Indonesia, said Marthen Welly, a marine conservation adviser at the Coral Triangle Center.
Indonesia experienced the most severe dry season last year since 2019 due to the El Nino.
While Indonesia's corals are more resilient and tend to recover faster, Marthen said it will not be enough to withstand the rising ocean temperature.
"It's predicted that the coral bleaching will occur more often, between one or two years with the current temperature," he said, quoting the latest research by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
However, Sugiarto says he is determined to continue his campaign to conserve corals, and is advocating coral conservation to younger Indonesians and seeking funds to establish a village community to monitor illegal fishing.
"We feel that we have the obligation to guard the sustainability of underwater life especially corals," he said.
© Thomson Reuters 2024.
22 Comments
Moonraker
Happy news for the life haters but depressing for those who love the beauty and diversity of this living planet.
Bad Haircut
The Great Barrier Reef regularly bleaches in various areas due to various reasons including water temperature changes, and then recovers, as do other reefs like this one in Indonesia. Prof. Peter Ridd inconveniently pointed this out and was excommunicated by his employer, James Cook University, for speaking out against the narrative.
GuruMick
Sadly, Bali had/has a penchant for removing coral and using it in building , even road making.
Unsure if this persists.
Prof. Peter Ridd dismissed for other reasons than a different view.
Sorry to speak out against your narrative.
Oceans are warming, acidification increasing, corals dying out and climate change has been comprehensively identified as the prime mover.
Fishermen in my local area, hardly "lefty ,anarchist greenies " have spoken to me about how the seas are warmer and 1/ some seaweed no longer appear, which affects 2/ some species of fish are declining.
From NASA to fisherman the consensus is in.
virusrex
Terrible misrepresentation of the actual situation, scientists disagreeing over things is normal part of science, but being fired in no way provides proof one opinion suddenly becomes more valuable. Ridd did not disproved the "narrative" he made terribly bad arguments against the available evidence and has been debunked many times, which is expected since he is no expert on marine biology, making him prone to accept invalid assumptions and mistakes in his work. Unfortunately part of the rebuttal of his work comes from willingly committing scientific misconduct that can't be explained by trying to work outside of his field.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X18301425?via%3Dihub
Claiming research is wrong by ignoring the available controls, cherry picking only old and less powerful studies (instead of the most important ones) and making up conclusions different from the ones the authors of the reports have is not just speaking against the consensus, is lying willingly in order to secure support from known antiscientific organizations.
Bad Haircut
No, the university came up with all manner of excuses to get rid of him, but the underlying reason was that he didn't toe the line with their position, academic freedom be damned.
Bad Haircut
As someone for whom deliberate misrepresentation is your stock in trade, your post has no value. You're not an expert in anything and are in no position to dismiss Ridd, so be on your way and cease and desist from behaving as if you're this site's science fact checker.
GuruMick
Bad Haircut ..... Actually, I thought Virusrex was on the money.
And you just went ad hominin and lost the argument in doing so.
Your last paragraph is funny on a second reading, but not for reasons you'd imagine.
A cry from the wilderness.....lol.
virusrex
And again, that is irrelevant for the merit of his claims, if a professor says the moon is made of cheese and is fired that does not make that claim less impossible either.
He was disproved repeatedly, the reference given is enough to explain how wrong he was, and you made not even an effort to refute that reference, that means it stands valid and proves the person you are choosing to believe above the world's actual experts on the field is wrong. When you choose to keep believing his claims you are doing it after it was proved to you they were wrong. That is not rational.
What has not value is the daily attempt to make personal attacks instead of using arguments (mostly because you have none of them) I presented a reference where scientific arguments are given that prove his mistakes and scientific malpractice, you are not trying to disprove nameless people on the internet, you are trying to disprove many scientific publications that prove Ridd could not be more wrong.
And you have offered no argument against the scientific arguments that prove it so.
Scientist are the ones that did that, and found him lacking deeply. Demanding people stop offering evidence of this has no merit.
starpunk
And those screwheads just keep saying, 'Nothing you can do about it' or they even deny it. Ecologists have been warning about this at least since 1990 but the deniers and liars keep on denying and lying even when it's right there in our faces.
Good thing we are exploring other worlds because one day in the future we're going to have to evacuate it. We keep mucking it up!
starpunk
Where I live at and across America, bees and monarch butterflies and frogs have diminished in numbers too. Of course bees pollinate, and do we need to mention how important frogs are?
zibala
Mother Nature at work again.
GreenPeas
But nothing to do with cellphone towers or the widespread use of pesticides etc.? Why do you believe "climate change" is causing the apparent die-off of these creatures? The climate has been changing forever and yet these animals have adapted and survived since who knows when.
Jimizo
I think it’s around 99% of all species which have ever existed are now extinct ( I haven’t read half of the books written on this ).
There’s no guarantee a species will survive.
NB
I think that your point of view is wrong.
Jimizo
Maybe that opinion will evaporate and turn to steam.
GreenPeas
That's right. But the modern industrial age only goes back 100~150 years. Assuming you are correct that 99% of all species have disappeared then what caused them to go extinct?
GuruMick
Starpunk above...yes my friend...Frogs ARE important.
My wife has a phobia of them....so if I want to make her scream, I'll go fetch a little frog.
NB
The ocean is warming up very rapidly.
virusrex
This is as natural as a gunshot death, when something is a result of human activity (and this is) then it becomes invalid to call it natural.
/dev/random
Don't be too harsh with him. He probably also believes cavities are caused by the Tooth Fairy.
Raw Beer
The message I got when I attended a presentation by someone doing related research is that as temperatures shift the optimal area for these reefs also shift. So they might observe bleaching in some areas because it is now too hot, but they'll find them thriving in nearby areas where it was previously too cold. Articles tend to avoid mentioning the latter...
dutch
more alarmist histrionics and lies.
2024 record coral cover for Great Barrier Reef.
Last 3 years have been unprecedented
https://apps.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring/sector/list
Read it and weep, alarmists.