The main purpose of this article was to show how climate change has been killing coral which is leading to negative effects in the water ecosystems. Kim Cobb, a researcher from the Georgia Institute of Technology was sampling coral in in the Kiritimati Islands when she was something strange. She saw that an entire coral was covered with “red brown fuzz”.  The “red brown fuzz” was algae that grew on top of dead coral. All this coral is dying due to the mass bleaching that is occurring around the world. Some scientist believe that severe heat stresses that came from multiple weather events such as the pass El Nino is causing this problem. According to data that was college by the same scientist, this passed El Nino has threatened more than a third of the Earth’s coral reefs and many may not recover.
This is a big problem because coral reefs are an essential part of the ocean’s ecosystems. They provide food and shelter for a quarter of all marine species. In addition, people that feed off these ecosystems will also be effected because the fish they hunt will disappear which mean that will have to find a new food source. Since the bleaching is still occurring and will not be over for the several months, scientists don’t know how this will exactly affect the ocean’s ecosystem. All they know is that this will have a negative effect on the oceans and this bleaching needs to be closely observed.