Gulf of Eilat Corals Probed For Secret Of Surviving Global Warming

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Researchers from the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat monitor coral growth while scuba diving on June 12, 2017 in the Red Sea off Eilat. (AFP PHOTO / MENAHEM KAHANA)

In the azure waters of the Red Sea, Maoz Fine and his team dive to study what may be the planet’s most unique coral: one that can survive global warming, at least for now.

The corals, striking in their red, orange and green colors, grow on tables some eight meters (26 feet) underwater, put there by the Israeli scientists to unlock their secrets to survival.

Tropical fish at the Eilat Dolphin Reef. (Asaf Zvuloni/ Israel Nature and Parks Authority/FLASH90)

They are of the same species that grows elsewhere in the northern Red Sea and are resistant to high temperatures.

Fine’s team dives in scuba gear to monitor the corals, taking notes on water-resistant pads.

“We’re looking here at a population of corals on a reef that is very resilient to high temperature changes, and is most likely going to be the last to survive in a world undergoing very significant warming and acidification of sea water,” Fine said at his nearby office ahead of the dive.

That is what has prompted Fine’s work, both in the Red Sea and on its shores.Global warming has in recent years caused colorful coral reefs to bleach and die around the world — but not in the Gulf of Eilat, or Aqaba, part of the northern Red Sea.

At the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat, dozens of aquaria have been lined up in rows just off the Red Sea shore containing samples of local corals.

A robot slowly dips its arms into each glass container, taking measurements and uploading them to a database.

“We exposed corals to high temperatures over long periods of time, beyond the current peak summer temperatures and even beyond the model-based temperatures we predict for the end of the century,” said Fine, a marine biology professor from Bar Ilan University in central Israel.

He explained: “They didn’t undergo bleaching.”

“Over the past 6,000 years they underwent a form of selection through a very, very hot body of water, and only those that could pass through that hot water body reached here, the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Eilat,” he said.

According to Fine, the Gulf of Eilat corals fare well in heat thanks to their slow journey from the Indian Ocean through the Bab al-Mandab strait, between Djibouti and Yemen, where water temperatures are much higher.