<
https://theconversation.com/seaweed-is-taking-over-coral-reefs-but-theres-a-gardening-solution-sea-weeding-212460>
"In the early 1990s, marine researchers in the Caribbean found something
alarming. On reef after reef, corals were dying off – and seaweed was growing
in their place.
Since then, this pattern has been observed on reefs around the world: as corals
die, seaweed takes over.
Once seaweed gets a foothold, it’s hard for coral to compete. These large,
fleshy algae can quickly come to dominate. As the oceans heat up and reefs
degrade, the trend is expected to accelerate. Former coral reefs will become
dominated by seaweed instead, with cascading damage to reef ecosystems.
This shift hasn’t happened widely on the Great Barrier Reef – yet. But there
are worrying signs of seaweed takeover on some reefs, including those fringing
Yunbenun (Magnetic Island).
We wondered – what if you could help corals by weeding out intruding seaweed?
In our new research, we found sea-weeding actually worked, giving coral time to
recover.
Of course, this is a stopgap measure. It’s designed to buy time while we tackle
the main threats to the world’s largest reef system – notably, climate change."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
