Good news from Queensland: Certain reefs in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park seem to have undergone a remarkable recovery since the devastating Keppel Islands coral bleaching event of 2006.

In 2006, massive and severe coral bleaching occurred around the Keppel Islands due to high sea temperatures. After being bleached, the reefs rapidly became overgrown with a species of seaweed and scientists feared this would be the end of the corals.

Zoology Prof. Yossi Loya at the Tel Aviv University in Israel has discovered that corals changes sex to survive periods of stress, such as high water temperatures. By observing the behaviour of Japanese sea corals he discovered that stressed female mushroom coral (fungiid coral) change gender to become males, and that male corals are much better at handling stress and fare better at surviving on limited resources. Not all females go through his change but many do and most of the population is therefore male during periods of intense stress….

A group of scientists from the Catalyst One expedition has discovered three previously unknown coral reefs 35 miles of the coast of Florida. The coral reefs consist mainly of Lophelia coral and are located at a depth of 450 metres (1475 feet).

Lophelia pertusa is a cold-water coral famous for its lack of zooxanthellae.

Rare coral species may be saving themselves from extinction by hybridising with other coral species, says Australian scientist Zoe Richards. Richards and his colleagues have studied 14 rare[1] and eight common coral species of the genus Acropora in the Indo-Pacific.

In order to find out more about hybridisation among corals, the team did a phylogenetic analysis using the highly polymorphic single-copy nuclear Pax-C 46/47 intron and the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region as markers.

A six-month long investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) has led to the arrest of seven adults and one juvenile in Tampa. The arrested persons are believed to have been involved in various illegal activates concerning marine life, including catching protected sharks, sea horses, peppermint shrimp and bay scallops in Floridian waters, and exporting illegally obtained marine life to Europe. They are also suspected of having sold bait fish and bait shrimp as food for human consumption.

Thanks to the efforts of local resident Pak Dodent, coral destroyed around Sumatra by the 2004 tsunami is now making a remarkably recovery.

Dodent lives on the island of Pulau Wey off the north coast of Sumatra and the narrow channel between his small village Ibioh and a nearby island was particularly devastated by the enormous forces unleashed by the tsunami.

According to University of Queensland marine biologist Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, recipient of the prestigious Eureka science prize in 1999 for his work on coral bleaching, sea temperatures are likely to rise 2 degrees C over the next three decades due to climate change and such an increase will cause Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to die.

Hoegh-Guldberg’s statement is now being criticized by other scientists for being overly pessimistic, since it does not consider the adaptive capabilities of coral reefs.

The proposed Coral Sea marine park is now one step closer to becoming a reality – it has gained support from Coral Sea fishermen.

A group of scientists, environmental groups, and former members of Australia’s navy are now calling for the creation of another reserve that would ban fishing in a whopping 400,000 square mile area off Australia’s northeast coast.

A group of scientist from UK, Australia, the US, Sweden and France are arguing that we need to rethink how we protect our marine environment if we want to protect our reefs. The way we protect vulnerable areas today will not suffice to save the coral reefs from the threat of global warming.

The type of small protected areas that we [...]

Scuba diving tourists are an important source of income for Egypt, but now the tourism sector might be sawing off the branch on which they’re sitting by over-exploiting the sensitive coral reefs of the Red Sea. According to a study by Hasler and Ott, heavily dived dive sites near the town of Dahab have a significantly lower level of [...]