Scientists at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography
published information this week related to coral reefs and the threat of human
activities such as pollution, global warming and overfishing –results from an
expedition they led to a chain of remote islands in the central
Ocean
The exploration of four atolls in the Line Islands, which
are situated approximately 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, is the first study of
coral reefs that comprehensibly covers organisms from microbes to sharks.
“One of the major surprising findings from this study, with
direct conservation relevance, is that the healthier reefs showed the capacity
to recover from climate change events,” SIO scientist Stuart Sandin said in a
press release. “When the ecosystem structure is intact, the corals appear to
bounce back better from previous warm water events that have killed coral.”
