In mid-2023, the Caribbean Sea simmered as air temperatures soared, marking the hottest days ever recorded in Puerto Rico and Barbados. Beginning in March, sea surface temperatures throughout the region ranged between 1° and 3° Celsius warmer than normal (1.8°-5.4° Fahrenheit). This unprecedented heat brought on the worst coral bleaching event in the Caribbean’s history: It whitened 60 to 100% of the reef in some areas, and many patches died. But among the skeletons, a group of young corals kept their color, appearing to have not only survived bleaching, but resisted it altogether. “It’s pretty devastating when [you look out at] reefs that you’ve been working on for many, many years and then you see the coral suffering,” Valérie Chamberland, a coral reef ecologist with the Miami-based conservation organization SECORE International, told Mongabay. “But seeing all of our young [coral] recruits faring pretty well was very encouraging.” Under extreme thermal stress, corals expel the symbiotic food-producing algae that live in their tissue, turning pale or completely white. This bleaching can cause death when ocean temperatures surge 1°C greater than the historical maximum monthly average for two months. In 2023, abnormal heating lingered for more than five months in some parts of the Caribbean around Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica, the longest duration on record in the region. In a study published Sept. 18 in the journal PLOS ONE that Chamberland co-authored, researchers found that certain species of coral bred for restoration showed few signs of bleaching despite the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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