WHAT IS CAUSING CORAL BLEACHING AND WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES?
In recent years, corals of nearly all species around the world have displayed more and more frequent bleaching events. These events have prompted scientists to look into what the specific cause might be. When a coral bleaches, it loses its zooxanthellae, or symbiotic algae, and may never regain them. If a coral does not regain the zooxanthellae it dies, and the death of even a few coral species on a given reef can have devastating consequences. Not only do fishes and other sea creatures depend on the corals for food and shelter, we depend on the coral reefs for many uses as well. Due to the ramifications of continued bleaching events, marine biologists have been frantically trying to discover the cause(s) of these episodes. A large contingent of scientists cite stresses on the corals such as heat, UV light or bacterial/viral infections, as possible explanations. Another, much smaller group, claims that these bleaching events may be a natural occurrence which enables the corals to bette
