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Climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and coral reefs globally,
said Roger Beeden, the authority’s chief scientist The Great Barrier Reef has seen increases in coral cover to high levels in recent years, indicating it is still a resilient system. But this resilience has its limits,
said David Wachenfeld, research program director at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, a government agency Southernmost parts of the reef, which had been largely spared previously, have been hit particularly hard this time, with bleaching affecting many more species, extending to greater depths, and affecting some of the oldest and most resilient corals,
said Simon Bradshaw, a research director with the nonprofit Climate Council I think we will solve the problem if we get up and fight to solve the problem,
Urgent global action is necessary to reduce future bleaching events, primarily driven by carbon emissions,
I do get depressed sometimes, because the feeling is like, 'My God, this is happening,
said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a professor of marine studies at the University of Queensland who published early predictions about how global warming would be catastrophic for coral reefs This is scary, because coral reefs are so important,
said Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program, which monitors and predicts bleaching events Now we're at the point where we're in the disaster movie,
We have less time ... to make the changes,
We've already seen back-to-back bleaching events in two consecutive years in 2016-17 and the last three events, including this one, have only been two years apart,
The cumulative impacts experienced across the reef this summer have been higher than previous summers,
the federally funded Marine Park Authority said in a statement We don't know yet if they've already sustained too much damage to recover or not,
The Great Barrier Reef is an incredible ecosystem, and while it has shown its resilience time and time again, this summer has been particularly challenging,
Over all the sources of potential stress across the whole reef, yes, the exposure this summer is really high in most places,
We have seen [coral] mortality from flooding, from cyclones and from heat stress.”
Dr David Wachenfeld, reef research program director at Aims, said That’s lethal levels of heat exposure at tourism hotspots along the length of the GBR and we have never seen anything like that,
This cumulative story is really important and across most of the reef we will see consequences,
It’s absolutely shocking. This has not ended yet and it remains to be seen how bad it will be.”
This prolonged heat exposure has caused mass bleaching of coral reef communities observed within all three regions of the Great Barrier Reef,
the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said in an update on its website on Wednesday Only the strongest and fastest possible actions to decrease global greenhouse gas emissions will reduce the risks of thermal stress on the Reef and limit the impacts from climate change on the Great Barrier Reef,
the marine park authority said