CANBERRA, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Coral bleaching has been found off the coast of Australia's Northern Territory for the first time, prompting concerns over the future of marine ecosystems, park rangers told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Wednesday.
Park rangers at the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park on the remote Cobourg Peninsula, 60 kilometers north-east of Darwin, filmed large patches of bleached coral in January, three years after healthy coral was filmed in the same area.
Coral bleaching occurs when water that coral is living in becomes too warm and the marine invertebrates expel the algae living in its tissue, causing the coral to turn completely white.
Coral can survive a bleaching event but they are under more stress and more vulnerable to mortality.
The finding by the rangers in collaboration with the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) came after the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that NT waters were on red alert for temperature rises of four degrees Celsius above average.
"Cobourg is an extremely valuable marine park and we've seen some evidence coming out of there that they are suffering from coral bleaching," Adele Pedder from the AMCS told the ABC.
"There's evidence that we've recently had a sea surface temperature warming event that is like a heatwave underwater."
Pedder said that the death of the NT's remote reefs before they could be properly explored and studied would be a tragedy.
"We know that climate change is having an impact, so we can expect more of these events, we can expect more coral bleaching happening in the NT," she said.
According to a 2017 study by the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, two thirds of the iconic Great Barrier Reef has been hit by severe coral bleaching.
