The mega-coral measures 34 metres by 32 metres – making it larger than a blue whale – and it is thought to be three centuries old

SYDNEY — Scientists say they have found the world’s largest coral near the Pacific’s Solomon Islands, announcing Thursday a major discovery “pulsing with life and color”. The coral is so immense that researchers sailing the crystal waters of the Solomon archipelago initially thought they had stumbled across a hulking shipwreck. “Just when we think there is nothing left to discover on planet earth, we find a massive coral made of nearly one billion little polyps, pulsing with life and color,” marine ecologist Enric Sala said. READ: Parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef show highest coral cover in 36 years The […]...

Keep on reading: Scientists say world's largest coral found near Solomon Islands

The world’s largest coral colony has been discovered near the remote Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean – an undersea mass that is so big, it can be seen from space, National Geographic scientists announced Nov. 12, 2024.   

Washington — National Geographic scientists say they’ve discovered the world’s largest coral near the remote Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean — an undersea mass that is so big, it can be seen from space. The man who found it, Manu San Felix, director of cinematography for National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas, a program dedicated to marine conservation, says the giant organism measures 34 meters wide and 32 meters long and is “close to the size of a cathedral.” “I see this as a living library that has the information of the conditions of the oceans for centuries,” he told reporters this week, underscoring it is a reminder of the need to better protect the ocean from global climate change. Eric Brown, a Pristine Seas coral scientist, said the enormous coral species, Pavona clavus, is healthy and has “high reproductive potential,” making it essential to help other coral reef ecosystems recover from the damage of a warming ocean. Corals “are very vulnerable ecosystems. So, it’s important for us to do whatever we can to protect these environments that are both small and mighty,” Brown said at a Tuesday press briefing to announce the find. The announcement comes as world leaders gather for the United Nations climate conference, known as COP29, in Azerbaijan. Attendees are trying to agree on new mechanisms to finance a global energy transition to renewables and help nations like the Pacific Islands pay for the cost of adapting to rising oceans. Pristine Seas is also encouraging nations to designate marine protected areas, or MPAs. The goal is to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr. is attending the summit. Palau has walled off 80% of its waters to development, while the nearby Pacific Island nation of Niue has designated 40% of its waters for protection. “It cannot just be big countries. Small countries need to do their part,” he told VOA in an interview. “So, it's all of us working together ... protecting our oceans, because we know that healthy oceans are an important part of the ecosystem and important in regulating climate.” Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele agreed. “Our survival depends on healthy coral reefs, so this exciting discovery underlines the importance of protecting and sustaining them for future generations,” he said in a press release. But so far, the Solomon Islands has created a network of 79 designated ocean conservation areas — less than 1% of its exclusive economic zone. What’s more, its economy is largely dependent on forestry — the very industry that threatens the viability of coral through sedimentation. “All that sediment is going onto a reef, and it’s smothering the reef, thereby preventing the corals from being able to feed, to grow, to reproduce,” Molly Timmers, Pristine Seas lead scientist on the Solomon Islands, said at the press briefing. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an online platform that seeks to visualize the distribution of international trade, the Solomons exported $308 million in rough wood in 2022, with $260 million of it going to China. VOA asked Chief Dennis Marita, director of culture at the Ministry of Culture & Tourism, how the government can find a balance. “Much of the logging activities are happening on the mainland” away from the coral, Marita said in an interview, but “there needs to be a serious awareness about the impacts of what’s happening in the logging industry to the marine environment.” Marita sees this coral discovery as a way to attract researchers, biologists and tourists to bring in revenue to the small island nation of 740,000 people. Earlier this week, the Solomon Islands signed an agreement with China to provide visa-free travel between the two countries. “Suddenly, people will start coming to the island, but then we need to be prepared for them, and also, we need to ensure that the coral is safeguarded,” Marita said. Dr. Daniel Barshis of Old Dominion University’s Ecological Sciences Department in Norfolk, Virginia, said that idea has merit. “I would imagine this discovery would draw tourists to the area, similar to how old-growth trees inspire folks to visit,” he told VOA via email. “The fact that [corals] like this still exist is a reminder that coral reefs are still surviving and deserve us working as hard as we possibly can to save them from some of the worst-case scenarios if we don't reverse course on greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible,” said Barshis. William Yang contributed to this report.

The coral could be 500 years old and is bigger than a blue whale, scientists say.

World-first robotic hand to help cultivate baby corals for reef restoration  CSIRO

Coral is the beautiful thing undoubtedly which most of us like. We always think about the red color when we talk about coral. Which the coral mainly includes two kinds. One kind is the shell quality such as the black coral and the golden...

Keep the Party Going – A Tribute to Jimmy Buffett featuring The Coral Reefer Band. Thrilled to be able to announce that the The Coral Reefer Band will be playing at the Hard Rock Hotel’s …

You wouldn't be blamed for assuming Coralie Clément is a contemporary of Françoise Hardy or Jane Birkin's; her coquettish and sultry, whispered vocals, suave touches of bossa and samba, and splashy dabblings in yé-yé make her sound like Brigitte Fontaine buffing out her scratches and sanding down her bristly edges.

Her debut LP, Salle des pas perdus, is a collaboration with her brother Benjamin Biolay, who wrote and arranged it, only further reinforcing her throwback nature. For a time during the 90s, Momus did a lot of his own Serge Gainsbourg-styled team-ups with elegant yet wryly sassy chanteuses—the Kahimi Karie songs, the Poison Girl Friend songs, the Laila France songs—and this record plucks at the same heartstrings.

The subsequent albums are interesting and possessed with the same sort of low-key charisma, with Toystore perhaps being the most aggressively different: in place of gentle strings and unhurried horns are skippy ukuleles, tinny tambourines, frothy farfisas.

Oxybenzone, a UV-filtering compound used in sunscreens, has been found in high concentrations in the waters around popular coral reefs in Hawaii and the Caribbean. According to new research, the chemical not only kills coral, it causes DNA damage in adults and deforms the DNA in coral in the larval stage, making it unlikely they can develop properly...

Coral FREE Sports Betting Offers

While the management of local and regional stressors threatening coral reefs is critical, these efforts on their own will not be enough in the face of global climate change, says a new interim report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Coral reefs around the world face growing danger from a changing climate, on top of the historic threats from local pollution and habitat destruction.

By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams “This is a wake-up call,” says one Australian marine biologist. “Given sea temperatures usually increase as we get towards March, this is probably conservative.” Delivering yet another “wake-up call” after recent studies have shown that … Continue reading →

TORONTO, ON — A team of scientists from Canada and Australia have discovered that the decline in shark populations is detrimental to coral reefs. “Where shark numbers are reduced due to commercial fishing, there is also a decrease in the herbivorous fishes which play a key role in promoting reef health,” said Jonathan Ruppert, a […]

Coral Splendor by Brian Davis is a(n) Limited Edition. The Edition is Limited to 5 pcs

Coral Calero Muñoz and Felix Garcia, professors at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, speak with host Giovanni Asproni about green and sustainable software—an approach to software development aimed at creating software systems that consume less energy and produce less CO2 during their entire lifetimes with minimal impact on their functionality and other qualities. The episode starts by describing why green software matters, particularly in the context of global warming, and introducing the key concepts. Continues discussing the current status of the field, in both academia and industry, and finishes with hints and tips that can be readily applied by development teams to make their systems greener. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

New study shows multiple factors joined forces to devastate the Great Barrier Reef in 2016.

The post How climate killed corals appeared first on GeoSpace.

The parrotfish, a species of marine life abundant in Bermuda’s waters, is singlehandedly working to keep both the coral reefs and beaches surrounding the island healthy, all thanks to their voracious appetite and ability to defecate up to 200 pounds of sand per year, with a recent report highlighting the fact that areas that don’t […]

In the House of Assembly today [July 11], Minister of Health, Seniors and Environment Jeanne Atherden delivered a report on the state of health of the coral reefs found in Bermuda’s waters and the Caribbean, citing the report by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network [GCRMN] released last week. Minister Atherden said, “Last week saw […]

Bermuda-based Catlin Group has joined forces with the Natural History Museum in London to present a major exhibition, which opens today [Mar 27], that explores the importance and beauty of the world’s coral reefs. The exhibition, ‘Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea’, includes 250 specimens from the Natural History Museum’s coral, fish and marine invertebrate collection. […]

Foreign scientists working in small island states need to create better collaborations with local researchers and marine management entities if coral reefs, fish, and other marine resources are to be saved from irreversible degradation, according to a new opinion paper published by researchers from the Caribbean, Canada, the USA, and UK. The opinion, published last […]

Five years of data collected on reefs and offshore in Bermuda shows that coral reef chemistry – and perhaps the future success of corals – is tied not only to the human carbon emissions causing systematic ocean acidification, but also to seasonal and decadal cycles in the open waters of the Atlantic, and the balance […]

A new three-year NASA field expedition gets underway this year to survey more of the world’s coral reefs, with Dr Eric Hochberg from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences set to be involved in the study. NASA said, “Coral reefs, sometimes called the rainforests of the sea, are home to a quarter of all ocean […]

A recently published video is showcasing the work that the Living Reefs Foundation is doing with the help of 11th Hour Racing to help protect Bermuda’s coral reefs. The Foundation’s website says, “Living Reefs, a Bermuda Registered Charity, was formed in 2014 to help implement some of the measures needed to keep Bermuda’s reefs and […]

Historically abundant predatory fishes such as groupers and snappers are rare and at critically low numbers on Bermuda reefs based on international standards, according to a recently released report by Bermudian scientists Thaddeus and Jessie Murdoch through the Bermuda Reef Ecosystem Assessment and Mapping [BREAM] Programme. In good news, however, hard corals are at good […]

The Bermuda’s Living Reefs Foundation will host a ‘Coral Garden Party’ on May 19 at 6.30pm at the Rosewood Tucker’s Point Resort. A spokesperson said, “Have you ever heard of Coral Gardening? This relatively new approach to restoring coral reefs is now launched in Bermuda. Since August 2016, Bermuda’s Living Reefs Foundation has installed two […]

[Opinion column written by Joleah Lamb] There are more than 11 billion pieces of plastic debris on coral reefs across the Asia-Pacific, according to our new research, which also found that contact with plastic can make corals more than 20 times more susceptible to disease. In our study, published in Science, we examined more than […]

Percussion band Coral Beats will hold an event dubbed ‘Coral Beats for the Coral Reef‘ on Sunday, March 10 at 7.00pm at Warwick Academy, where they plan to use objects they found during beach cleanups to “create new sounds.” A spokesperson said, “Members of Coral Beats, Bermuda’s own all female Brazilian percussion band, have been busy […]

The Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute [BUEI] announced that the topic for this month’s ‘Kids Hour Saturdays’ on June 18th is coral reefs. A spokesperson said, “Kids Hours Saturdays’ takes place every third Saturday of the month at 11am and 2pm respectively. Each hour features the screening of short films followed by a book reading for […]

Noting the “tan-brown slicks floating in the waters along South Shore and other parts of the island,” officials said that it is “coral spawn seeking new areas to propagate” and “while it may look unsightly, this act of nature is one to be celebrated as it reflects the excellent health of Bermuda’s coral reef system.” […]

The latest design in Bernews’ weekly Wallpaper Wednesday series dives into virtual art with Bermuda coral calligraphy. The design is available in two sizes; a Facebook profile cover image and also in a vertical format, ideally sized for use as a mobile phone wallpaper, WhatsApp status image or Instagram story. You can download both sizes […]

In celebration of World Oceans Day, BioQuest announced it has “officially completed the draft reference genome of the Grooved Brain Coral, marking the first-time whole genome sequencing of a coral reef has been accomplished in the Caribbean by the Caribbean.” A spokesperson said, “This groundbreaking work was conducted locally in Bermuda in collaboration with the […]

The latest design in Bernews’ weekly Wallpaper Wednesday series features a mesmerizing underwater scene, depicting ‘Bermuda’. The design is available in two sizes; a Facebook profile cover image and also in a vertical format, ideally sized for use as a mobile phone wallpaper, WhatsApp status image or Instagram story. You can download both sizes below, […]

In the remote Pacific, the Phoenix Islands provide an unspoiled center for marine science

Marine biologist Nancy Knowlton discusses a research trip to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama, where she and her collaborators collected data on coral reef populations. Reef sustainability is closely tied to coral reproduction. Then director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Knowlton, who has since been hired to lead the Smithsonian's Ocean Initiative, has reservations about the long-term future of corals

Watch breathtaking underwater footage off the Panama coast, where coral reefs reproduce in a flurry of carefully-timed action. Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/A-Coral-Reefs-Mass-Spawning.html

Margaret Wertheim talks about how math and climate change inspired her to start the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project. Read more at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-to-crochet-a-coral-reef-69064479/

In one reef, three million sea cucumbers released 64,000 metric tons of nutrient-packed poo back into the ecosystem

The reefs in Eilat displayed widespread bleaching, a phenomenon in which the symbiosis between coral and algae fails, typically due to high water temperatures.

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