Coral Bleaching Reversal!!

Exciting news everyone! Being on the front lines of climate change has it’s benefits because as much stress and damage we see due to higher water temperatures and more dramatic storms, waves and coastal erosion we are also the first to see when the ocean regulates itself and rebounds from these stresses!

We are so excited to announce that we have seen a huge turn around in the mass bleaching we have been monitoring since September! We have been reporting our findings to Coral Watch / University of Queensland and 2 of our Pay it Forward Program participants have committed to monthly surveys of specific corals in Toucari Bay at Tube Reef so that we can track trends and correlations between water temperatures, bleaching and recovery.

We have seen remarkable re-pigmentation of corals that were 100% white as seen below:

The first photo was taken in September at the height of the water temps and bleaching - this brain coral in particular suffered 100% bleaching and it is quite a large specimen. The second photo was taken in the first week of January and over 50% of the coral had regained pigment- since then there has been rapid change and now almost the entire head is pigmented again!

Below is one of our Pay it Forward participants taking notes and recording her coral health survey data. More photos of the changes over time and links to the collected data are and will continue to be available to supporters of the Pay it Forward Program - as the project progresses and more data is collected on some of our most prized coral specimens - so join the community to get more updates!