Prof. Terry Hughes tweeted this photo (below) on 2 May 2016: “In 1998, global warming #bleached and killed this mature thicket of Acropora pulchra. Note the recovery since then.”

Bleaching killed this mature thicket of Acropora pulchra. The bottom line: If severe bleaching events occur regularly at shorter than 10-15 year intervals, the reefs face a death spiral of coral mortality followed by inadequate recovery periods. This is what we now face as the planet continues to heat.

And in his 2009 Royal Society presentation, Charlie Veron included a slide (below) which said: “400 (ppm) will be reached by ~2015; will cause major weather events; will cause severe bleaching, mainly during El Nino years”. He was spot on. So the science-aware have known for at least seven years that this moment would arrive.

Slide from Charlie Veron’s Royal Society presentation in 2009

Now we need an urgent conversation about what it would take to “Save the Reef”, given the conditions that now exist.

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