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When the water off the coast of Florida reached nearly 38C last year, corals simply could not cope. Reefs bleached en masse, turning deathly white after corals ejected the symbiotic algae that provide them with food via photosynthesis.

The Coral Restoration Foundation (CRF), based in the Florida Keys, cultivates coral in 6,000 square metres of ocean-based nurseries. It lost half of the corals it was rearing in nurseries for transplantation onto the region’s degraded reefs, and suffered the near-total death of the threatened acroporid  corals it had been painstakingly restoring. More…………

Menyusul tahun 2023 yang diperkirakan sebagai tahun terhangat yang pernah tercatat, tahun depan dapat membawa peristiwa pemutihan karang massal yang mengganggu ekosistem laut. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, seorang profesor studi kelautan di Universitas Queensland, Australia, memprediksi bahwa terumbu karang akan mengalami pemutihan dramatis. Hoegh-Guldberg dan rekan-rekannya membagikan prediksi mereka dalam artikel “Perspectives” untuk Science.org. Baca Selengkapnya……

Laporan Status Kesehatan Terumbu Karang tahun 2019 yang dirilis oleh Pusat Riset Oseanografi Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN) menemukan hanya 6.4% saja, dari 1153 terumbu yang disurvey, masih dalam kategori bagus alias memiliki tutupan karang hidup lebih dari 75%. Mayoritas terumbu (71%) justru hanya memiliki tutupan karang hidup kurang dari 50%. Guna memperbaiki keadaan tersebut, banyak pihak melirik proyek restorasi terumbu karang sebagai ajang unjuk komitmen pelestarian laut. Penelitian terbaru saya bersama tim yang terbit di jurnal Marine Policy menyatakan bahwa Indonesia merupakan negara dengan kegiatan restorasi terumbu karang terbanyak di dunia. Totalnya ada 533 proyek yang tersebar di 29 provinsi selama 30 tahun terakhir (1990-2020). Baca selengkapnya……….

Selain menjadi salah satu negara dengan ekosistem karang terkaya di dunia, Indonesia juga menjadi ‘raja’ proyek restorasi karang. Penelitian terbaru oleh Tries Blandine Razak, periset terumbu karang dari Institut Pertanian Bogor, merekam ada sekitar 533 proyek restorasi karang Indonesia selama 1990-2020 yang tersebar di 29 provinsi. Beberapa proyek bahkan terdiri dari dua aktivitas restorasi di titik yang berbeda, maupun menggunakan metode yang tak sama. Baca selengkapnya……

“When I was a kid, it was easy to find and catch fish and to see hatchlings of turtles walking around the beach on my way to school,” says Matla’ah, a resident of Gili Indah village on Gili Trawangan, a sun-kissed island popular with divers between the better-known Indonesian islands of Bali and Lombok. For the current generation of Gili Trawangan children, these experiences are less common, as many of the island’s coastal ecosystems have been severely damaged by natural and human-related disturbances. More......

Lisa Carne was swimming through a bed of seagrass in northern Belize when she saw a hunk of elkhorn coral lying loose on the sandy bottom. She paused to look at it. With its rich amber color and antler-like branches, the fragment seemed alive despite having broken off from its mother colony. A professional diver, Carne was struck with an idea: What if she picked this up and moved it to a patch of dead reef? What if she did it over and over again? Could she help the reef recover more quickly? more……….

A new study shows that two-fifths of coral reefs globally are seriously threatened by sediment runoff — the transportation of accumulated material from land to sea, often with harmful pollutants tagging along. But it also offers a potential solution: reforestation. More……