Corals affected by climate change recover deficiently, says study

New Delhi: A new study conducted by scientists says that coral reefs that are affected by climate change have very less chances of recovering.

As per the study, corals that survive rapid bleaching fuelled by climate change are deeply damaged an have little chances of recovery.

Sixteen years after the 1998 El Nino ravaged coral in the Indian Ocean's Seychelles archipelago, no reefs had recovered their original growth rates and barely a third were expanding at all, they reported in a study, the first to track coral health over a two-decade period.

As important, perhaps, were qualitative changes.

A dozen of 21 reefs tracked from 1994 were still struggling in 2014 against leafy algae, sea urchins and parrot fish to restore their original balance of shallow-water flora and fauna.

The rest underwent what marine biologists call a "regime shift", and are today composed of a new - and far less diverse - mix of corals.

(With AFP inputs)