The corals of the Marietas Islands, a pair of small islands in Mexico’s Pacific Ocean, have survived record-high temperatures and uncontrolled tourism triggered by the sudden international fame of “the beach of love,” a picture-perfect quarry where people like to take selfies. Today, the corals of Islas Marietas National Park, created in 2005, are recovering slowly, reduced to a fifth of the coverage they had 30 years ago. In 2016, a government decree put a stop to uncontrolled tourism in the area. But during the second half of 2023, El Niño set back the recovery process. High temperatures brought on by the climate event caused widespread coral bleaching. Coral bleaching. Photo courtesy of the University of Guadalajara’s coral rehabilitation project for Mexico’s central Pacific. Bleaching happens when corals become stressed by pollution, acidification or a rise in ocean temperatures. They expel the tiny algae living inside them providing food. Once that happens, the corals lose their color and die. But it’s not all bad news, according to Paola Rodríguez Troncoso, coordinator of the University of Guadalajara’s coral rehabilitation project for Mexico’s central Pacific. The marine biologist said more than a decade of work has led to the discovery of individual corals that show resistance to high temperatures. The discovery, she said, could help address the problems brought on by climate change. Successes and setbacks to recovery In 1997, when the biodiversity of Las Marietas was hit by a previous El Niño, the biology monitoring program at the University of Guadalajara…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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