Scotsman.com News - Sci-Tech - Coral reefs and marine life may be wiped out by global warming: "Coral reefs and marine life may be wiped out by global warming
ROD MINCHIN

GLOBAL warming has had a more devastating effect on some of the world's finest coral reefs than previously assumed, scientists said last night.

Large sections of coral reefs and much of the marine life they support may be wiped out.

The international team of researchers surveyed 21 sites and more than 50,000 square metres of coral reefs in the inner islands of the Seychelles in 1994 and 2005.

Their report is the first to show the damage of global warming on the inner Seychelles coral reef in which rising sea temperatures have killed off more than 90 per cent of the coral.

The Newcastle University-led team has published its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research showed that, while a warming-up of the Indian Ocean in 1998 was devastating in the short term, the main long-term impacts are down to the damaged reefs being largely unable to reseed and recover.

Many simply collapsed into rubble that became covered by unsightly algae.

The collapse of the reefs removed food and shelter from predators for a large and diverse amount of marine life - in 2005 average coral cover in the area surveyed was just 7.5 per cent.

The survey showed that four fish species are possibly already locally extinct, and six species are at critically low levels.

The survey also revealed that species diversity of the fish community had decreased by 50 per cent in the heavily impacted sites.

Yet while a bleak picture is painted in the inner islands of the Seychelles, the survey area, from a diving perspective the outer carbonate islands still offer healthy coral reefs.