AN enormous proportion of the world's coral has died this year as a result of the highest sea temperatures on record, while in the areas surveyed in the Indian Ocean, between 70 and 90 per cent is dead, scientists said yesterday.
Dr Thomas Goreau, an internationally respected coral reef scientist working with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said: "This is an unprecedented natural disaster."
In the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles of reef have been killed including in tourist areas such as the Seychelles, Mauritius and the Maldives. Thousands of miles of corals in the Western Pacific, from Vietnam to the Philippines and Indonesia, have died or bleached as they have been starved of the symbiotic algae that provide their food and energy. The only large areas of coral to have escaped some devastation are the atolls of the central Pacific.
Dr Goreau told a meeting at the climate change talks in Buenos Aires: "The coral reefs are the canary in the mine for global warming. They will go first."
IUCN, the World Conservation Union, said coral reefs provided over 100 countries with fish and other services such as tourism worth $500 billion a year. They also prevented tidal waves and erosion. They supported 93,000 fish species - 25 per cent of the total - in 0.3 per cent of its sea area.
A joint statement by IUCN's reef scientists said: "Unless this conference takes effective action to stop global climate change, coral reefs and the benefits they provide will be condemned to death. Other ecosystems will follow."
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