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Reuters
news agency
Friday, July 20, 2018 at 16:29 – The deep coral reefs in a "twilight zone" in the oceans differ markedly from those near the surface, Mitigating the hope that they can be a haven for marine life fleeing threats such as climate change and pollution, scientists said Thursday.
Coral reefs in shallow waters around the world are among the ecosystems most at risk from climate change. The Great Barrier Reef off Australia has undergone intense bleaching, a bleaching caused by warm waters that can kill corals, in 2016 and 2017.
A team of American divers studied reefs shortly known in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The depth of sunlight is 30 to 150 meters, and most species of coral and fish did not resemble those of the surface.
"We were surprised to find little overlap," said lead author Luiz Rocha. The Academy of Sciences told Reuters the results published in the journal Science.
Less than five percent of the fish and corals were found in shallow, deep waters against the previous estimate of 60-75 percent scientists, based on historical records, he said.
"The potential of deep reefs to act in a refuge capacity is much less than we previously hoped," they wrote. And, like shallow reefs, deep reefs have also faced threats such as climate change, storms, and pollution
Peter Gash (left), owner and manager of the Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort. with Oliver Lanyon and Lewis Marshall, Senior Rangers in the Great Barrier Reef Region for the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, during a reef state inspection in an area called "Coral Gardens" located at Lady's Elliot Island in Queensland, Australia, June. For example, divers have found, for example, plastic fishing nets entangled in deep corals off the Philippines and deep corals damaged by warm waters off the Bahamas.
Rocha said scientists were trying to place temperature sensors in the twilight zone to see how deep the reefs were exposed to rising ocean temperatures, which are the most extreme at the surface. around the world like shallow reefs, he felt. Some reefs, such as those at the mouth of the Amazon, only exist in the depths.
The authors advocate better guarantees for deep reefs, for example by expanding protected areas and prohibiting bottom trawlers that can scratch the seabed. ] A 2016 study by the United Nations Environment Program showed that some deep reefs could be "lifeboats" for connected, shallow, connected reefs
. to be as vulnerable as shallower reefs to human pressures.
The details of the scientific study can be found here.
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