Coral bleaching in the Caramuanas reef (Todos os Santos Bay, Brazil) during the 2010 El Niño event

Abstract

Episodes of coral bleaching related to El Niño events have been increasing in frequency and severity. This phenomenon is cited as a major cause of degradation of coral reefs. This study evaluates the effects of coral bleaching on the Caramuanas reef community, which occurred during the southern hemisphere summer of 2009/2010. Within this period the sea surface temperature of 31°C and thermal anomalies up to almost 1°C were recorded. During and after this El Niño event, frequency and severity of bleaching, live coral cover, number of colonies, class size, disease occurrence, and mortality rate were monitored on corals larger than 20 cm in diameter. The samples were taken at twelve fixed transects, in three reef stations. Statistical analysis showed that the severity of bleaching was different between the two periods, during and after the 2010 ENSO event. The Caramuanas reef showed sublethal bleaching effects indicating that this reef is tolerant to bleaching when the temperature anomalies do not exceed 0.75°C within one week.

Thermal stress and tropical reefs: mass coral bleaching in a stable temperature environment?

“…Both events were related to positive SST anomalies, including several weeks of above-average temperatures and positive hot spot values (Ferreira et al 2013;Pereira et al 2015). Considering our results and previous reports (Miranda et al 2013;Ferreira et al 2013;Soares and Rabelo 2014;Dias and Gondim 2016), we hypothesize that the 2010 event had a regional-scale (> 1000 km) (Hughes et al 2018) impact at latitudes of 2-13°S on the SW Atlantic reefs. An important factor in understanding the bleaching thresholds in scleractinian corals in this region is adaptation to suboptimal conditions (Woesik et al 2011;Guest et al 2016).…”

“…These results are dissimilar to depth patterns of bleaching in other Brazilian reefs and elsewhere (Monroe et al 2018) in that shallow-water corals and inshore reefs are generally the most susceptible to bleaching. Previously, extensive bleaching was reported mainly for depths at 0-15 m in oceanic (Ferreira et al 2013) and coastal (Miranda et al 2013;Soares and Rabelo 2014;Dias and Gondim 2016) Brazilian reefs. The event reported here occurred before the mass bleaching detected in Caribbean coral reefs (October-December 2010) (Alemu and Clement 2014) (Online Resource 1).…”

“…Bleaching of S. stellata was assessed from videos and images in March 2010, July 2010, and May 2013 along belt transects (30 × 2 m). The variation in bleaching intensity (healthy bleaching, weak bleaching, or strong bleaching) per transect was determined by the combined fractions (%) of colony colors (normal brown, yellowish brown, pale yellow to white, respectively) as applied earlier in the Java Sea (Hoeksema 1991) and in Brazil (Miranda et al 2013;Leão et al 2016).…”

Coral Diseases in Northeastern Brazilian Reefs

“…According to Dias & Gondim (2016), the high incidence of sick colonies on the reefs of Seixas may be a consequence of the bleaching event of 2010. In Bahia, Miranda et al (2013) did not observe an outbreak of diseases in the community of corals after the 2010 event, however, in other parts of the world, the link between bleaching events and disease outbreaks was highly related. At the studied sites we identified or reported any mass bleaching between the surveys time.…”

Ação antrópica, conservação e perfil das tartarugas marinhas no Brasil: uma revisão narrativa da literatura

“…A emissão de gases poluentes que intensificam o efeito estufa, junto com a poluição do ambiente marinho, que contém organismos como fitoplâncton e algasresponsáveis por grande parte do sequestro de carbono da atmosferaestimulam a constante elevação de temperatura dos oceanos e da atmosfera, provocando branqueamento dos corais, e reduzem drasticamente a vida nos locais afetados Miranda;Leão, 2013;Rabelo, 2014).…”