The Status of Coral Reefs in The Larak Island, Persian Gulf, from 2012 to 2018

Year 2018, Volume: 1 Issue: 3, 49 - 53, 22.12.2018

Pegah Javıd Maryam Soyouf Jahromı Mohammad Sharif Ranjbar

Abstract

Coral reefs are one of the most important marine ecosystems around the world. This ecosystem is the breeding and living ground for vast of animals including corals, fish, mollusks and even sea turtles and dolphins. There is a disaster which is raising more and more by natural effects and more importantly by human origin. Global warming and consequently raising heat endangers the life of living organisms especially immobile ones. Coral reefs belong to the sessile animals that cannot move, migrate or defend themselves as strongly as advanced organisms. Different stressors such as thermal shock result in bleaching coral reefs so that the symbiont algae (zooxanthellae) does not return to the colony which ends to corals’ death. Coral Reefs of the Persian Gulf are not the exception and they have been bleached severely during last few years. The study was done by direct observation and via SCUBA diving and photography. The Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data were achieved by NOAA satellite and they were analyzed by Microsoft Excel 2010. Typically, water temperature rises from March to middle of August and decreases again toward December. The most severe bleaching happened in August 2015 in Northern Larak Island while the water temperature was 32.60 ᵒC. However, the water temperature was high even in January, February and March to 22.84 ᵒC. The highest temperature during August 2017 (32.81 ᵒC) was another bleaching peak for North and Eastern Larak Island corals. During this catastrophe in 2017, more than 90% of genus Acropora and more than 80% of genus Porites were bleached. There was a recovery status in bleached corals in 2018 but dead corals never recovered. Although there are resistant corals in the coral reef ecosystem, heat is a certain stress which can ruin the ecosystem.

Keywords

Coral bleaching, Larak Island, Heat shock

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