Are Eastern Pacific Coral Reefs Becoming More Resilient to ENSO?

Post date: Jul 20, 2015 2:42:03 PM

Sea lions at play around a newly installed coral monitoring site at Champion Island Galapagos, May 2015 (credit: Eduardo Espinosa)

Coral reefs of the eastern tropical Pacific are severely impacted the El Niño climactic fluctuations which cause water to heat up well above normal conditions. Two of the worst events in 1982-83 and 1997-98 caused massive bleaching and mortality of reef corals in the Galapagos Islands and the Panamanian Pacific, as describer by Peter W. Glynn and colleagues. However, the 1997-98 event had less of an impact even though by many metrics it was stronger than 1982-83. Our current project is investigating the potential impacts of the 2015-2016 El Niño event. This event could also be a large El Niño and our project seeks to understand if eastern Pacific reefs are becoming more resilient to warm water events, which could have great ramifications globally in a warming tropical ocean. This is a collaborative project among the Smith lab and Drs. Peggy Fong (UCLA; Principal Investigator), Andrew Baker (U. Miami), Peter W. Glynn (U. Miami), Derek Manzello (NOAA), Wade McGillis (Columbia U.), and Juan L. Maté (Smithsonian TRI) funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (OCE-1447341). I addition, in country partners include the Charles Darwin Foundation, the Parque Nacional Galapagos, and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Updates:

- Viktor Brandtneris traveled to the Galapagos to continue research in July 2015.

- Viktor and Tyler will travel to Panama in August 2015.