That's really misleading. There are large spans of Earth's recentish (i.e. Phanerozoic) history where there are aren't significant reef building organisms at all. Furthermore, "bleaching" is very specific to today's scleractinian corals, which are not the main reef building organisms in the past. They didn't exist before the Triassic.
It's true that some mass extinctions coincide with the loss of the major reef builders at the time, but that's mostly reflective of most shallow marine life dying off. It's not necessarily causal.
There are also mass extinctions where reef builders truck right through. E.g. the K-T boundary.
Before gastropods evolved, stromatolites were significant reef builders.
In the Ordovician, tabulate corals were important reef builders, although they mostly form patch reefs. Stromatporoids (kind of a hard sponge - they're weird) were also present, and become more important as primary reef building organisms in the Devonian and Silurian.
The Mississippian and Pennsylvanian didn't have the sort of reefs we think about today. Instead there were a lot of deep water carbonate mounds with bryozoans, echinoderms (e.g crinoids and blastoids), etc.
In the Permian, bryozoans were one of key shallow water reef builders.
Modern corals arose in the Triassic, and have been important reef builders since. However, rudist bivalves were particularly dominant in the Cretaceous as large reef builders. They went extinct at the K-T boundary, but modern scleractinian corals continued more or less straight through.
I like the framing of coral reef restoration as an apollo style moonshot project, that we know where we’re need to get but not how, so let’s figure out how. Cool stuff.
I also liked the words of caution and urgency from other animal preservation groups, that reefs have a chance to get ahead of the problem.
This guy sounds more optimistic than the reporting has been for the last few years. Check out the documentary Chasing Coral for more info on the bleaching that’s been reported.
KAUST have been doing good Coral preservation work for years now and the Red Sea is a great place to experiment because the corals evolved to suit higher temps than most places will get with warming factored in especially their shallow varieties. Glad to see them pick up talented people to make this happen.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 30.7 ms ] threadhttps://www.coralvita.co/
It's true that some mass extinctions coincide with the loss of the major reef builders at the time, but that's mostly reflective of most shallow marine life dying off. It's not necessarily causal.
There are also mass extinctions where reef builders truck right through. E.g. the K-T boundary.
In the Ordovician, tabulate corals were important reef builders, although they mostly form patch reefs. Stromatporoids (kind of a hard sponge - they're weird) were also present, and become more important as primary reef building organisms in the Devonian and Silurian.
The Mississippian and Pennsylvanian didn't have the sort of reefs we think about today. Instead there were a lot of deep water carbonate mounds with bryozoans, echinoderms (e.g crinoids and blastoids), etc.
In the Permian, bryozoans were one of key shallow water reef builders.
Modern corals arose in the Triassic, and have been important reef builders since. However, rudist bivalves were particularly dominant in the Cretaceous as large reef builders. They went extinct at the K-T boundary, but modern scleractinian corals continued more or less straight through.
I also liked the words of caution and urgency from other animal preservation groups, that reefs have a chance to get ahead of the problem.
> "A healthy coral at the Shushah Island Coral Reefscape in the Red Sea"
Nope. There is not any healthy coral in that photo. The blue thing is a Tridacna, the famous giant clam.