With To­ba­go’s coral reefs at risk of bleach­ing in the com­ing weeks, the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs is ask­ing cit­i­zens to re­port oc­cur­rences over the next three months.

The US-based Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch has re­leased the lat­est coral bleach­ing out­look for Au­gust to No­vem­ber for the Caribbean re­gion. NOAA found that T&T’s coral bleach­ing stress gauge is cur­rent­ly at Watch Lev­el, mean­ing that the wa­ters around To­ba­go are above av­er­age sea sur­face tem­per­a­ture (SST) for this time of year. NOAA pre­dicts that over the next five to eight weeks, To­ba­go and the rest of the Less­er An­tilles have a 60 per cent chance of reach­ing Bleach­ing Alert Lev­el One, which is a high like­li­hood of coral bleach­ing. Mean­while, the out­look for the next nine to 12 weeks in­di­cates a 60 per cent chance of reach­ing “Bleach­ing Alert Lev­el Two, which is wide­spread coral bleach­ing and coral mor­tal­i­ty.

“It is im­por­tant for cit­i­zens who utilise the wa­ters around To­ba­go to keep an eye out for changes to our reefs,” the IMA stat­ed. Caribbean corals are typ­i­cal­ly shades of brown and green, but once bleach­ing be­gins, the corals ap­pear pale and even­tu­al­ly fade to bone white. At this point, the corals have lost most of their al­gal pig­ments and can­not sur­vive for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods with­out the need­ed al­gae. In many cas­es, they die.

The IMA ex­plained that corals are ca­pa­ble of build­ing mas­sive un­der­wa­ter struc­tures be­cause of their re­la­tion­ship with the al­gae that live in­side its tis­sue. The al­gae pho­to­syn­the­sise us­ing sun­light to pro­duce enough en­er­gy to sup­ply both them­selves and their coral host. In re­turn, the coral pro­vides the al­gae with a haven, stores es­sen­tial nu­tri­ents and re­moves the al­gae’s waste. How­ev­er, when corals be­come stressed through warm or very cold wa­ter, the al­gae are ex­pelled from the coral. This caus­es the coral to turn white and is there­fore re­ferred to as coral bleach­ing.

When coral has lost its ma­jor source of food and if un­favourable con­di­tions per­sist, it will starve and even­tu­al­ly die.

While coral reefs are love­ly to look at, it’s main im­por­tance is the di­verse and valu­able ecosys­tem it pro­vides to thou­sands of species of fish and hun­dreds of oth­er sea crea­tures. Ac­cord­ing to NOAA, many drugs are al­so be­ing de­vel­oped us­ing coral reef an­i­mals and plants as pos­si­ble cures for can­cer, arthri­tis, virus­es and oth­er dis­eases. In To­ba­go’s case, it is an at­trac­tion for tourists as some are eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to swim­mers. The IMA not­ed that in the last 40 years, coral reefs around the world have suf­fered from bleach­ing, where large sec­tions of reef turned white as sum­mer­time sea tem­per­a­tures be­came too warm be­cause of glob­al warm­ing. It stat­ed that the coral reefs of To­ba­go have al­so suf­fered from mul­ti­ple bleach­ing events in the past, in­clud­ing 2005 and 2010, which have sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­grad­ed reef health.

Any­one com­ing across signs of coral bleach­ing should con­tact the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs, The THA’s De­part­ment of Ma­rine Af­fairs and Fish­eries and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute in Char­lot­teville or the Buc­coo Reef Trust.

The IMA said that it would be valu­able if pic­tures and de­tails such as lo­ca­tion, depth and ex­tent of bleach­ing ob­served can be pro­vid­ed.