Scientists Blame El Nino, Warming for ‘Gruesome’ Coral Death

This photo provided by the University of Victoria shows dying Pocillopora or cauliflower coral. The coral on the sea floor around Kiritimati looked like a boneyard in November. Stark, white and lifeless. But there was still some hope. University of Victoria/Danielle Claar via AP

The coral on the sea floor around the Pacific island of Kiritimati looked like a boneyard in November—stark, white and lifeless. But there was still some hope.

This month, color returned with fuzzy reds and browns, but that’s not good news. Algae has overtaken the lifeless coral on what had been some of the most pristine coral reefs on the planet, said University of Victoria coral reef scientist Julia Baum after dozens of dives in the past week. Maybe 5 percent will survive, she estimated.

“What it really looks like is a ghost town,” Baum said. “It’s as if the buildings are standing but no one’s home.”

Kiritimati is where El Nino, along with global warming, has done the most damage to corals in the past two years, experts said. While dramatic images of unprecedented total bleaching on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are stunning the world, thousands of miles to the east conditions are somehow even worse.

This photo provided by the University of Victoria, taken in April 2016, shows much of the coral is dead, overgrown with algae at the Pacific island of Kiritimati. The coral on the sea floor around Kiritimati looked like a boneyard in November 2015. Danielle Claar/University of Victoria via AP