[Coral-List] FW: Evidence for Porites surviving rising ocean temperatures?

Jessica Ward Jessica.Ward at erm.com
Sun Oct 7 09:39:02 EDT 2012


Hello Listers.

I just wanted to flag something of interest I noted recently while diving off Phuket.    My husband and I did a series of dives in the area over two days, visiting a site known as 'Shark Point' twice.  Though the local dive masters claimed this was the best site in the area,  we noted that the reef was not in great shape .  In fact, much of the scleractinian coral was dead, with exception of Porites colonies (I think P. lobata).  This interested me  after seeing posts on the List predicting that Porites may survive climate change  and rising ocean temperatures better than other genera of scleractinian corals. When we inquired as to what may have happened to kill off the coral, we were told a bleaching event occurred a couple years back.  If this is true, the fact that only Porites (mostly) survived may be evidence of the current theory.  I was curious to know if anyone had any  pre-bleaching information on this or other sites in the area and could compare pre-bleaching verus post-bleaching coral cover and species survived?  Would  make for an interesting study .

Cheers.

Jessica C Ward

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