With the massive coral bleaching event occurring现在在大堡礁和太平洋的其他地区，很容易使珊瑚礁的未来感到沮丧和灰心。面对如此多的压力和压力源尤其气候变化，很难不对他们的批发破坏感到绝望。
但是，重要的是要记住，这不是珊瑚礁第一次遭受巨大的漂白，我们已经有很好的证据和文献证明了这一点is珊瑚礁可以恢复。在1998年至1999年，尤其是我们看到了巨大的，广泛的珊瑚漂白，这使许多地方从珊瑚礁天堂和100％的实时珊瑚覆盖率转变为贫瘠的珊瑚岩石田。
Thankfully, dozens if not hundreds of coral reef ecologists have made it their life’s work to study the aftermath of coral bleaching events. Fortunately, as it turns out, when the stress of prolonged high temperatures goes away, that once thriving coral reef is still prime real estate for corals to grow.
它可以服用as little as ten years for a coral reef to rebound从曾经是贫瘠的岩石田中有50％的现场珊瑚覆盖物或更多。这里的最大因素，大的通配符，如果愿意的话，是X因素，是删除和减少任何造成珊瑚漂白和破坏的东西。
1990年代后期，帕劳和斐济几乎被摧毁的珊瑚礁已经完全反弹了，有些地区几乎恢复了所有以前的现场珊瑚掩护。请记住，这些是一些最好的情况，在没有任何其他重大漂白事件的情况下，它们恢复了，无法进一步恢复。
As well know by now, regardless of what is responsible for it, climate change is causing the world to grow ever hotter. Each year seems to bring with it new records of warm temperature and so by most predictions, we are looking at a future where El Nino events will warm waters more frequently, and more severely. But it IS possible for corals to recover, naturally, as long as the reefs are left undisturbed, unpolluted and not overfished or over-harvested.
Bruce Carlson is a legend in the marine aquarium world, and he’s done his fair share of environmental research and surveys, especially in relation to massive coral bleaching events. This short video below documents more than a decade of studying the effects of coral bleaching in Fiji. At first the video is quite depressing, to see the massive scale of the coral die off.
但值得庆幸的是,特别是原始tha礁t Bruce has been studying since the late 90s has shown itself to be particularly resilient, and ten years after a near complete wipeout the reef has rebounded to live coral cover over 50% of the reef surface. Keep in mind that this is without any kind of human intervention and with all that we’ve learned about coral culture in aquariums and mariculture in the sea,和人类的投入我们甚至可以加速珊瑚礁的恢复，甚至可能select more heat-tolerant corals对于后代的珊瑚礁。
