27 years have been enough for one of the most beautiful natural places on Earth to have deteriorated in an alarming way. According to a new report published in the magazineProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS, theGreat Australian Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world, has lost half its population. What have been the causes?
Several have been the causes of this difficult recoverable deterioration of this place included within the UNESCO World Heritage Site . On the one hand, the constant and unstoppable rise in ocean temperatures and increasingly intense tropical storms are partly to blame. However, another natural factor has had a very noticeable influence on this deterioration of the coral reef: the colonization of an invasive species of starfish.
And it is that although from the outside it may seem that the coral stars are beautiful and harmless, the reality is quite different. Acanthaster planci , a starfish known as the crown of thorns, feeds on coral and is responsible for the decline of 42 percent of the total population. In fact, if the researchers were able to stop the advance of this starfish, the corals would gradually recover at a rate of 0.89 percent each year.
For their part, tropical storms are responsible for 48 percent of the loss of coral, while the increase in the temperature of the oceans has caused the loss of a unicellular protozoan that gives the corals their color, which has produced their bleaching.
” We can’t stop the storms, but maybe we can stop the crowns of thorns . If we can, we will give the Great Barrier Reef a greater opportunity to adapt to challenges such as rising sea temperatures and acidification of the sea. oceans, “explained John Gunn, the executive director of AIMS, in a statement.
