Corals are bleaching in every corner of the ocean, threatening its web of life – the Washington Post

Bleached plate corals and Sea Fans on Molasses Reef, Key Largo, Florida (by Matt Kieffer CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

First around Fiji, then the Florida Keys, then Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and now in the Indian Ocean. In the past year, anomalous ocean temperatures have left a trail of devastation for the world’s corals, bleaching entire reefs and threatening widespread coral mortality — and now, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and International Coral Reef Initiative say the world is experiencing its fourth global bleaching event, the second in the last decade…

The Widest-Ever Global Coral Crisis Will Hit Within Weeks, Scientists Say – the New York Times

Bleached corals at low tide, Heron Island, Australia, April 10, 2024 (by John Turnbull CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

The world’s coral reefs are in the throes of a global bleaching event caused by extraordinary ocean temperatures…It is the fourth such global event on record and is expected to affect more reefs than any other. Bleaching occurs when corals become so stressed that they lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. Bleached corals can recover, but if the water surrounding them is too hot for too long, they die…

Six Months After the Heat Spiked, Caribbean Corals Are Still Reeling – Hakai Magazine

Staghorn Coral (Acropora cervicornis) in Bonaire, Caribbean Neatherlands, taken on January 21, 2024 (by Tom Murray CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

For many Caribbean corals, last year’s heat proved too much to bear. The more time corals spend in hot water, the more likely they are to bleach, turning white as they expel the single-celled algae that live within their tissues. Without these symbiotic algae—and the energy they provide through photosynthesis—bleached corals starve. Survival becomes a struggle, and what had been a healthy thicket of colorful coral can turn into a tangle of skeletons…

How to Love an Oyster – Hakai

A cluster of Olympia oysters (by Matthew Gray, courtesy of Oregon State University CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

Most people, even those who know a thing or two about oysters and may perhaps enjoy eating them, have no idea that the sweet and buttery bivalves they are slurping down in San Francisco or Vancouver are not the native species of the West Coast but Japanese imports…It is only on rare occasions at certain bougie establishments that you might encounter the much-smaller Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida) on the menu, a Proustian remembrance with its miserly portion of meat and coppery taste…