Latest news with #InternationalCoralReefInitiative
Business Upturn
25-06-2025
- Science
- Business Upturn
CGTN Releases Interview Video Highlighting Coral Reef Crisis in the South China Sea
BEIJING, June 25, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Recently, in a report by Huang Yue, CGTN focused on the coral reef crisis in the South China Sea through an interview video that drew global attention. Ding Zhifu, a fisherman from Tanmen Port, Hainan, shared in the interview the water there was crystal blue. The coral reefs below were clearly visible. While now fish catch has dropped. Coral bleaching is damaging the habitats, and some foreign fishermen using explosives has made it even worse. The video, leveraging fishermen's testimonies, scientific monitoring, and international data, uncovers an ecological alert amid climate change and human destruction, mirroring the existential crisis of the South China Sea's coral reef ecosystem. The South China Sea, as blue granary for numerous fishermen, is ecologically threatened. The International Coral Reef Initiative's data shows that over 84% of global coral reefs have been affected by the fourth mass bleaching event, with significant damage in China's waters. In an interview, Professor Yang Hongqiang from the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology emphasized that the sharp decline in coral reef diversity has pushed many species to the brink of extinction. Seawater warming disrupts the coral-algae symbiosis, depriving corals of nutrients and hastening their death. Moreover, severe storms, ocean acidification, and Crown-of-Thorns starfish outbreaks are exacerbating the crisis. Meanwhile, misleading media reports hinder ecological conservation efforts. Some media outlets have sensationalized claims that China uses coral fragments to build artificial islands. However, CGTN's interview with relevant researchers revealed that most sandbars are naturally formed by wave-accumulated coral debris. Professor Yang Hongqiang presented monitoring records from 2016 to 2018, confirming that sandbars naturally shift after storms, not being artificially constructed. As a pivotal player in global biodiversity conservation, China offers a Chinese proposal for coral reef restoration. Professor Huang Hui's team, known as the Coral Mother, has planted nearly 400,000 coral plants and cultivated over 100 species across a 30-hectare sea area in Hainan. Additionally, China promotes coral reef monitoring and restoration through artificial intelligence, underwater sensors, and international cooperation. Immediate action on climate change is crucial to save the South China Sea's key ecosystems. Australian coral biologist Jennifer Matthews warns that time is of pressing, only with global attention to underwater ecological warnings can coral reefs' future be reversed. China Global Television Network Huang Yue [email protected] 17092894596
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
CGTN Releases Interview Video Highlighting Coral Reef Crisis in the South China Sea
BEIJING, June 25, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Recently, in a report by Huang Yue, CGTN focused on the coral reef crisis in the South China Sea through an interview video that drew global attention. Ding Zhifu, a fisherman from Tanmen Port, Hainan, shared in the interview the water there was crystal blue. The coral reefs below were clearly visible. While now fish catch has dropped. Coral bleaching is damaging the habitats, and some foreign fishermen using explosives has made it even worse. The video, leveraging fishermen's testimonies, scientific monitoring, and international data, uncovers an ecological alert amid climate change and human destruction, mirroring the existential crisis of the South China Sea's coral reef South China Sea, as blue granary for numerous fishermen, is ecologically threatened. The International Coral Reef Initiative's data shows that over 84% of global coral reefs have been affected by the fourth mass bleaching event, with significant damage in China's waters. In an interview, Professor Yang Hongqiang from the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology emphasized that the sharp decline in coral reef diversity has pushed many species to the brink of extinction. Seawater warming disrupts the coral-algae symbiosis, depriving corals of nutrients and hastening their death. Moreover, severe storms, ocean acidification, and Crown-of-Thorns starfish outbreaks are exacerbating the crisis. Meanwhile, misleading media reports hinder ecological conservation efforts. Some media outlets have sensationalized claims that China uses coral fragments to build artificial islands. However, CGTN's interview with relevant researchers revealed that most sandbars are naturally formed by wave-accumulated coral debris. Professor Yang Hongqiang presented monitoring records from 2016 to 2018, confirming that sandbars naturally shift after storms, not being artificially constructed. As a pivotal player in global biodiversity conservation, China offers a Chinese proposal for coral reef restoration. Professor Huang Hui's team, known as the Coral Mother, has planted nearly 400,000 coral plants and cultivated over 100 species across a 30-hectare sea area in Hainan. Additionally, China promotes coral reef monitoring and restoration through artificial intelligence, underwater sensors, and international cooperation. Immediate action on climate change is crucial to save the South China Sea's key ecosystems. Australian coral biologist Jennifer Matthews warns that time is of pressing, only with global attention to underwater ecological warnings can coral reefs' future be reversed. China Global Television Network Huang Yue wdlpr@ A photo accompanying this announcement is available at in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
02-06-2025
- Health
- Forbes
World Reef Awareness Day 2025: Bringing Corals Back To Life
Coral reefs in the Maldives getty On June 1st, the world celebrated World Reef Awareness Day 2025 under the urgent theme: 'Bringing Corals Back to Life.' This day highlights the indispensable role coral reefs play in sustaining marine life and coastal communities and the existential threats they now face. According to the Coral Reef Alliance, coral reefs, which cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, support approximately 25% of all marine species. Beyond biodiversity, they provide food, livelihoods, and coastal protection for over one billion people globally. However as time progresses, what is notable is that these ecosystems are collapsing. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the ongoing 2023–2025 global coral bleaching event is the most extensive on record. To further give light to the situation, the International Coral Reef Initiative indicated that, bleaching-level heat stress has now impacted 84% of the world's coral reefs, with damage recorded across 82 countries, territories, and economies. For comparison, only 21% of reefs experienced similar stress during the first global bleaching event in 1998, rising to 37% in 2010, and 68% during the prolonged third event between 2014 and 2017. Scientists have already described the current fourth global bleaching event as 'unprecedented' as early as May 2024. In fact, the widely-used Bleaching Alert System had to expand its scale, adding new Levels 3 through 5 to capture the escalating risk. Previously, Level 2 indicated potential mortality for heat-sensitive corals; Level 5 now signals a risk where more than 80% of all corals on a reef could die from sustained bleaching conditions. The World Wildlife Fund article also warns that if current warming trends continue, up to 90% of coral reefs could disappear by 2050. In response, restoration strategies are gaining traction, for example, as reported in Time Magazine, Mars Inc. is making waves in reef rehabilitation. the company has planted over 1.3 million corals in the past 15 years. Leading these efforts is David Smith, the company's chief marine scientist, who ensures that each coral restoration project is grounded in rigorous scientific research. Mars Inc's "reef stars" hexagonal steel structures are seeded with sand and coral fragments has helped Indonesia's Hope Reef rebound from just 2% coral cover to over 70%, with fish populations surging by 260%. Meanwhile, researchers are developing heat-resistant hybrid corals better suited for warming seas, according to National Geographic. Technological solutions are also advancing, according to NOAA, scientists are testing rubble stabilization for the first time in Hawaii's coastal waters as a method of coral restoration, and early results are promising. The technique involves anchoring loose and broken reef fragments to the seafloor, providing a stable foundation for coral regrowth. This process has already helped revive disintegrated reef systems, offering them a renewed chance at recovery. World Reef Awareness Day is more than symbolic as it is a call to urgent action. Without intervention, the planet risks losing one of its most vital ecosystems as a result it is essential to restore them, not only an environmental imperative but essential for future food security, biodiversity, and climate resilience.
NDTV
02-06-2025
- Science
- NDTV
In A Hotter Future, What Happens After Coral Reefs Die
The fate of coral reefs has been written with a degree of certainty rare in climate science: at 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, most are expected to die. This is not a far-off scenario. Scientists predict that the rise of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) will be reached within a decade and that beyond that point, many corals simply cannot survive. It is important to accept this and ask what next "rather than trying to hold onto the past", said David Obura, chair of IPBES, the UN's expert scientific panel on biodiversity. "I wish it were different," Obura, a Kenyan reef scientist and founding director of CORDIO East Africa, a marine research organisation, told AFP. "We need to be pragmatic about it and ask those questions, and face up to what the likely future will be." And yet, it is a subject few marine scientists care to dwell on. "We are having a hard time imagining that all coral reefs really could die off," said Melanie McField, a Caribbean reef expert, who described a "sort of pre-traumatic stress syndrome" among her colleagues. "But it is likely in the two-degree world we are rapidly accelerating to," McField, founding director of the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative, told AFP. When stressed in hotter ocean waters, corals expel the microscopic algae that provides their characteristic colour and food source. Without respite, bleached corals slowly starve. At 1.5C of warming relative to pre-industrial times, between 70 and 90 percent of coral reefs are expected to perish, according to the IPCC, the global authority on climate science. At 2C, that number rises to 99 percent. Even with warming as it stands today -- about 1.4C -- mass coral death is occurring, and many scientists believe the global collapse of tropical reefs may already be underway. What comes next Obura said it was not pessimistic to imagine a world without coral reefs, but an urgent question that scientists were "only just starting to grapple with". "I see no reason to not be clear about where we are at this point in time," Obura said. "Let's be honest about that, and deal with the consequences." Rather than disappear completely, coral reefs as they exist today will likely evolve into something very different, marine scientists on four continents told AFP. This would happen as slow-growing hard corals -- the primary reef builders that underpin the ecosystem -- die off, leaving behind white skeletons without living tissue. Gradually, these would be covered by algae and colonised by simpler organisms better able to withstand hotter oceans, like sponges, mussels, and weedy soft corals like sea fans. "There will be less winners than there are losers," said Tom Dallison, a marine scientist and strategic advisor to the International Coral Reef Initiative. These species would dominate this new underwater world. The dead coral beneath -- weakened by ocean acidification, and buffeted by waves and storms -- would erode over time into rubble. "They will still exist, but they will just look very different. It is our responsibility to ensure the services they provide, and those that depend on them, are protected," Dallison said. Dark horizon One quarter of all ocean species live among the world's corals. Smaller, sparser, less biodiverse reefs simply means fewer fish and other marine life. The collapse of reefs threatens in particular the estimated one billion people who rely on them for food, tourism income, and protection from coastal erosion and storms. But if protected and managed properly, these post-coral reefs could still be healthy, productive, attractive ecosystems that provide some economic benefit, said Obura. So far, the picture is fuzzy -- research into this future has been very limited. Stretched resources have been prioritised for protecting coral and exploring novel ways to make reefs more climate resilient. But climate change is not the only thing threatening corals. Tackling pollution, harmful subsidies, overfishing and other drivers of coral demise would give "the remaining places the best possible chance of making it through whatever eventual warming we have", Obura said. Conservation and restoration efforts were "absolutely essential" but alone were like "pushing a really heavy ball up a hill, and that hill is getting steeper", he added. Trying to save coral reefs "is going to be extremely difficult" as long as we keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere, said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, an oceans expert from France's flagship scientific research institute, CNRS. But some coral had developed a level of thermal tolerance, he said, and research into restoring small reef areas with these resilient strains held promise. "How do we work in this space when you have this sort of big dark event on the horizon? It's to make that dark event a little brighter," said Dallison.
France 24
02-06-2025
- Science
- France 24
In a hotter future, what comes after coral reefs die?
This is not a far-off scenario. Scientists predict that the rise of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) will be reached within a decade and that beyond that point, many coral simply cannot survive. It is important to accept this and ask what next "rather than trying to hold onto the past", said David Obura, chair of IPBES, the UN's expert scientific panel on biodiversity. "I wish it were different," Obura, a Kenyan reef scientist and founding director of CORDIO East Africa, a marine research organisation, told AFP. "We need to be pragmatic about it and ask those questions, and face up to what the likely future will be." And yet, it is a subject few marine scientists care to dwell on. "We are having a hard time imagining that all coral reefs really could die off," said Melanie McField, a Caribbean reef expert, who described a "sort of pre-traumatic stress syndrome" among her colleagues. "But it is likely in the two-degree world we are rapidly accelerating to," McField, founding director of the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative, told AFP. When stressed in hotter ocean waters, corals expel the microscopic algae that provides their characteristic colour and food source. Without respite, bleached corals slowly starve. At 1.5C of warming relative to pre-industrial times, between 70 and 90 percent of coral reefs are expected to perish, according to the IPCC, the global authority on climate science. At 2C, that number rises to 99 percent. Even with warming as it stands today -- about 1.4C -- mass coral death is occurring, and many scientists believe the global collapse of tropical reefs may already be underway. What comes next Obura said it was not pessimistic to imagine a world without coral reefs, but an urgent question that scientists were "only just starting to grapple with". "I see no reason to not be clear about where we are at this point in time," Obura said. "Let's be honest about that, and deal with the consequences." Rather than disappear completely, coral reefs as they exist today will likely evolve into something very different, marine scientists on four continents told AFP. This would happen as slow-growing hard corals -- the primary reef builders that underpin the ecosystem -- die off, leaving behind white skeletons without living tissue. Gradually, these would be covered by algae and colonised by simpler organisms better able to withstand hotter oceans, like sponges, mussels, and weedy soft corals like sea fans. "There will be less winners than there are losers," said Tom Dallison, a marine scientist and strategic advisor to the International Coral Reef Initiative. These species would dominate this new underwater world. The dead coral beneath -- weakened by ocean acidification, and buffeted by waves and storms -- would erode over time into rubble. "They will still exist, but they will just look very different. It is our responsibility to ensure the services they provide, and those that depend on them, are protected," Dallison said. Dark horizon One quarter of all ocean species live among the world's corals. Smaller, sparser, less biodiverse reefs simply means fewer fish and other marine life. The collapse of reefs threatens in particular the estimated one billion people who rely on them for food, tourism income, and protection from coastal erosion and storms. But if protected and managed properly, these post-coral reefs could still be healthy, productive, attractive ecosystems that provide some economic benefit, said Obura. So far, the picture is fuzzy -- research into this future has been very limited. Stretched resources have been prioritised for protecting coral and exploring novel ways to make reefs more climate resilient. But climate change is not the only thing threatening corals. Tackling pollution, harmful subsidies, overfishing and other drivers of coral demise would give "the remaining places the best possible chance of making it through whatever eventual warming we have", Obura said. Conservation and restoration efforts were "absolutely essential" but alone were like "pushing a really heavy ball up a hill, and that hill is getting steeper", he added. Trying to save coral reefs "is going to be extremely difficult" as long as we keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere, said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, an oceans expert from France's flagship scientific research institute, CNRS. But some coral had developed a level of thermal tolerance, he said, and research into restoring small reef areas with these resilient strains held promise. "How do we work in this space when you have this sort of big dark event on the horizon? It's to make that dark event a little brighter," said Dallison.
