Playing underwater sounds could help coral reefs fight global warming

2023 was the most well liked yr recorded on planet Earth – and that features the world’s oceans, the place information fell like dominos. Final week, round 5000 scientists gathered in New Orleans for the American Geophysical Union’s biennial Ocean Sciences Assembly. Atmosphere reporter James Dinneen was there to take the temperature of the researchers, who’ve been watching change after change unfold within the seas. You’ll be able to hear the phase at round 05:00 within the embedded participant or learn the transcript beneath.

Transcript

James Dinneen: There was one factor on everybody’s thoughts on the world’s largest gathering of ocean scientists: warmth.

England: “The warming during the last couple of a long time, however particularly this warming in 2023, has taken over the sphere.”

James: Matthew England is an oceanographer on the College of New South Wales in Australia. He was certainly one of 1000’s of ocean scientists gathered in New Orleans to debate the most recent analysis on what’s occurring at sea.

There are shows on all the pieces from new kinds of octopus to robotic flying fish. However rising temperatures are stealing the present.

England: “Our burning of fossil fuels, our emissions of greenhouse gasses into the environment, we all know that’s trapped warmth, we all know that 90 plus % of that has gone into the oceans.”

Common sea floor temperatures final yr smashed the earlier report, rising round 0.2 levels Celsius above 2022 ranges. The quantity of warmth within the prime 2000 meters of ocean waters additionally broke information. And there have been excessive marine warmth waves from the Atlantic to the Sea of Japan.

England: “It was the primary yr in all of the information the place it was arduous to search out part of the ocean that wasn’t hotter than common.”

Researchers listed here are grappling to grasp the drivers and consequence of all that warmth.

Take the thriller of Antarctica’s sea ice cowl, which was surprisingly strong till 2016. That yr, it dropped drastically. In 2022 it set one other report low which was damaged once more in 2023 when the ice didn’t recuperate within the Antarctic winter.

However maybe probably the most unambiguous victims of 2023’s temperatures had been coral reefs. Giant swaths of coral bleached and died, particularly across the Florida Keys within the Gulf of Mexico.

Ian Enochs on the US Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research the reefs within the Keys. He says seeing so many corals die was a painful expertise, however has solely drove dwelling the urgency of motion.

Enochs: “Some individuals would have a look at this and be downtrodden. And I’ve seen the precise reverse of that I’ve seen individuals come collectively and be so motivated to really do one thing significant, be capable to face this head on.”

Take Amy Apprill on the Woods Gap Oceanographic Establishment in Massachusetts, who’s engaged on completely different approaches to restoring coral ecosystems. There are many concepts. However one new strategy her staff is engaged on would use underwater sound.

Apprill: Sound is a basic cue that’s utilized by reef organisms. We all know it as part of their communication technique, and one thing that they depend on to create that wholesome surroundings.”

In assessments at a reef within the Virgin Islands, the researchers discovered that broadcasting recordings of a wholesome reef ecosystems underwater elevated the speed at which coral larvae connected to the reef. This might assist make coral restoration more practical within the face of rising temperatures.

Apprill: It’s simply been an unprecedented yr. However the piece that I maintain on to and that retains me optimistic is we’re simply beginning, we’re simply scratching the floor of placing these options into motion.