I wonder if coral coverage is a meaningful stat itself. Does that directly translate to diversified creatures?
replyWas in central GBR this year, can't say I'm super impressed but not sure how I should set my expectation
Not necessarily but they do measure diversity too, and it has not changed dramatically.
replyTypically the biggest change in diversity is due to cyclones which kill of the delicate and fast-growing corals like staghorns, which are also the fastest to grow back.
Wow, I wasn’t aware of this. I’ve always read climate change as the primary driver for bleaching. If that is the case, do we know why/how they’ve recovered?
replyCorals are killed en masse by other events, particularly cyclones. These have a much bigger affect on coral coverage, in the short term, than ocean temperatures / bleaching (which is transient and more localized).
replyBleaching is not death of the coral, it is the expulsion of algae (typically in high temperatures). The coral can find a different species of algae, or the algae can return once temperatures drop.
There are corals living in regions of the ocean with different temperatures, so it is not that high temperature alone would kill all coral, but populations adapted to a given region (like north vs south GBR) are being affected by the speed of the changes.