Coral Bleaching Research Paper

When coral gets stressed, they expel all the algae that provides it with about 90% of its energy, in a state of near death. Instead of the bright pink or yellow, or whatever bright color the coral originally was, it turns to a pale chalky white. If whatever is causing the coral to stress out continues, like the water is still too warm, it starts to starve and dies. If whatever is causing them stress goes away after a little while, it is possible for the coral to come back and regain their color. If not, the coral will die, which means all the fish will not have a source of food or a place for a home. They would be swimming along skeletons. The fish will either die or leave and will not return until a new colony of coral starts to grow and the place recovers. …show more content…
It’s more on the scale of a decade or so,” said Eakin. Corals can come back, but it is extremely difficult, especially because of how long it takes for them to come back. Bleaching has caused a high proportion of corals to not return. Once coral bleach, the corals are almost always lost and new colonies have to grow. Bleaching causes the corals to be more susceptible to disease and les likely to return. Not only that, because of how long it takes for them to grow, they may not actually grow because they could be overgrown by weeds and algae, which leads to coral not having anywhere to grow, leading to not all of the reef returning and recovering. "Even in ideal conditions, about 1/4 - 1/3 of a coral population dies each year from background mortality. They can die from old age, disease, predation, competition with a neighbor, erosion of their skeleton, smothering by sediment, severe coral bleaching, and from