A bad year for Caribbean Corals

Summary prepared by UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the recent Status of Caribbean Coral Reefs after Bleaching and Hurricanes in 2005. This summary, "A Bad Year for Caribbean Corals" will be published in a UNESCO science publication, "A World of Science", in April, available in English, Spanish and French.

The years 1998 and 2005 were the two most damaging years for coral reefs in recorded history. They were also the world’s hottest years since records began in 1880. About 16% of the world’s reefs were lost to coral bleaching in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific in 1998. Seven years on, unusually warm waters caused even worse coral bleaching, this time in the Caribbean where it was also a record year for hurricanes. Some of these hurricanes nevertheless had a silver lining: although they caused extensive damage, they also helped to save many corals by ‘taking the heat off them.’

Unlike the events of 1998, the climate-related bleaching event in the Caribbean did not occur in an information vacuum. This time, there were many scientific tools available and alerts were issued to those working and managing coral reefs in the Caribbean. Thanks to the pooling of data by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Reef Check, it has been possible to follow the sequence of events leading up to coral bleaching and to document much of the damage to reefs and livelihoods in the wider Caribbean.

This information has been compiled in a book on the Status of Caribbean Coral Reefs after Bleaching and Hurricanes in 2005. The report was launched on 4 February at UNESCO in Paris by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, whose members include UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, UNEP, ReefBase, NOAA, Reef Check, the World Wildlife Fund, World Conservation Union and many other collaborators.

Année noire pour les coraux des Caraïbes (p.20 Planète Science, Vol. 6, No. 2)