[Coral-List] Decline of Red Sea coral reefs

[Pawlik, Joseph]

Greetings, list,

More sad news about which you may not be aware: Red Sea coral reefs are rapidly losing coral cover from south to north because of summer high temperature events and unprecedented storms. Some of us had hoped that these reefs were resistant to climate change impacts, but evidently not.

Here is a video that shows the dramatic change in coral cover between 2019 and 2023 (effects of 5 summers) on reefs south of Marsa Alam, Egypt.

https://youtu.be/_-v7s4eBok0

Note the recently dead and toppled Porites lutea - many of these heads are hundreds, if not thousands of years old.
The video also shows dead reefs south of Al Lith on the Saudi Arabian side of the Red Sea - this is further south of the Egyptian reefs in the first part of the video, and these reefs died before 2017.

Important relative to recent discussions on this list is that these tragic losses are due entirely to high temperature events - these reefs are not impacted by human settlements or sources of pollution, nor is there evidence of disease events.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph R. Pawlik

Frank Hawkins Kenan Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology

Dept. of Biology and Marine Biology

UNCW Center for Marine Science

5600 Marvin K Moss Lane

Wilmington, NC  28409

Office:(910)962-2377; Cell:(910)232-3579

Website: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/index.html

PDFs: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html

Video Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/skndiver011

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