In April 2019, a marine heat wave struck a coral reef on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, killing much of the coral and the beneficial algae that colonized it. This “bleaching” event reduced live coral populations on the reef from about 75% beforehand to less than 17% a year later and led to a series of unexpected changes that have thwarted the reef’s recovery.
A long-term study of the area is challenging scientists’ understanding of the cycles of destruction and repair that can occur on a coral reef. The new findings are reported in the journal PLOS One.
Thousands of organisms contribute to the life of a reef, and each plays a specific role, said Peter Edmunds, a professor of biology at California State University, Northridge, who co-led the new study with former CSUN research technician Kathryn Scafidi and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign earth science and environmental change professor Bruce Fouke. Scafidi is first author of the paper and now a Ph.D. student at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.