People may not be aware of coral bleaching since it is happening below the surface. Coral bleaching is happening as the ocean temperature rises. This can affect many species and humans.
Coral bleaching is when the coral tissue has turned white or “bleached”. Bleaching takes place when ocean water warms up, stressing the coral, which then causes them to expel zooxanthellae. When coral expel the zooxanthellae, they are exposing their white skeleton. Coral bleaching can also be caused by disease, increased light, pollution from the land and over fishing. Excrement of nutrients from farms and industrial chemicals are also a threat to coral reefs. Bleaching also leave coral prone to disease which can be lethal to coral reef communities.
Bleaching can cause a great amount of death within coral reef communities because of disease increase. It can take some time before the corals can recover from bleaching. They can recover from bleaching if the temperature of the water decreases. Critical or long-term bleaching is most likely deadly. Almost one and a half square miles of reef bleached last year are now completely dead (NOAA, 2015) …show more content…
Once this happens the corals expel an algae called zooxanthellae. This algae lives inside the tissues of the coral. The zooxanthellae provide coral with most of their food, as well as their color (Brian Clark Howard,2016). Under conditions of high temperature and excess light, zooxanthellae become poisonous, deactivating the sunscreen coral produce to protect themselves (Veron,2013). Zooxanthellae produce oxygen as much as 4-8 times faster than coral host. Some of this oxygen is used for photosynthesis and becomes oxygen radicals causing cellular distress. As oxygen radicals become toxic, the zooxanthellae that produce them are expelled by the corals even though this action too puts corals at risk