Great Barrier Reef Section- Regenerates Itself!

'Lucky escape' for Australian coral reef
AFP April 23, 2009
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technol...350/story.html

SYDNEY – A section of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which scientists have warned could be killed by global warming within decades, has regenerated itself in record time, a scientist said Thursday.


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The badly damaged stretch of coral at Keppel Island, at the reef's southern end, became strangled by seaweed after it began bleaching in 2006 due to elevated sea temperatures and acidity, the results of global warming.

Bleaching occurs when the plant-like organisms that make up coral die and leave behind the white limestone skeleton of the reef.

Bleached coral usually takes up to 10 years to regrow by a process of "reseeding," when larvae from a distant reef is carried by currents to repopulate the damaged area.

But in an unusual combination of circumstances, McCook said, the Keppel reef managed "asexual regrowth" from surviving tissue fragments and had returned to abundance in just 12 months.
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