Coral reefs around the world are under increasing stress due to a combination of local and global factors.
Coral reefs around the world are under increasing stress due to a combination of local and global factors. As such, long-term investigation is becoming increasingly important to understanding ecosystem responses.
A new study -- the longest coral reef survey to date – provides an in-depth look at Australia's Great Barrier Reef over the past 91 years. Published in the journal Nature Communications by researchers at Bar-Ilan University and Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Israel, and the University of Queensland in Australia, the study concludes that since 1928 intertidal communities have experienced major phase-shifts as a result of local and global environmental change, leaving few signs that reefs will return to their initial state in the near future.
In 1928 the Great Barrier Reef Committee and the Royal Society of London sent an expedition to study the Great Barrier Reef. Members of the expedition, pioneers in coral biology and reef studies, lived on Low Isles for over a year. During this time they documented environmental conditions surrounding the coral reefs of the Low Isles, as well as the community structure of tidal and subtidal communities, using, for the first time, a diving helmet.
Read more at Bar-Ilan University
Image: Soft corals are now dominating large areas of the shadow reef which in 1928 had many species of hard corals too. CREDIT: Bar-Ilan University
