93 per cent of the 'Great Barrier Reef' affected by the most severe bleaching event ever recorded from.
Climate change is destroying the earth's largest coral ecosystem. Great Barrier Reef is dying due to the El Nino and climate change. (Read: Great Barrier Reef Similar Herpes Virus Infected ) This week, scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence field of coral reef studies completed extensive surveys on the iconic reef. They found that 93 percent of the 'Great Barrier Reef' affected by the most severe bleaching event ever recorded from."We've never seen this before bleaching scale," said Terry Hughes, a representative of the National Taskforce Coral Bleaching in a statement. "In the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef, it was like 10 cyclone came at once."Coral bleaching is a phenomenon in which the loss of color on the reef because the algae population decline. If not given time to recover, this can lead to bleaching of coral reefs to perish.Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef system in the world, located off the coast of Queensland, Australia, and extends over 1,400 miles. It consists of 3,000 individual reefs and is home to more than 100 islands.Of the 911 surveyed reefs, only 68 (7 percent) escapes from bleaching, while between 60 and 100 per cent of coral reefs affected by bleaching around 316. (Read also: Coral Bleaching Increasingly Severe )In an interview with National Geographic, Mark Eakin representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch call this situation as something very depressing. While Andrew Baird of the ARC said in a rilisbahwa roughly half of Bleached coral will die, and on some coral mortality rate is likely to exceed 90 percent.Although the study results obtained show menyedihakan, scientists said people can help preserve the reef by reducing local threats, including pollution, sedimentation and fishing practices that are not sustainable.( KN Rosandrani / Huffingtonpost )