A new study by Florida State University and Smithsonian Institution biologists shows that bleaching events brought on by rising sea temperatures are having a detrimental long-term impact on coral.
Bleaching—a process where high water temperatures or UV light stresses the coral to the point where it loses its symbiotic algal partners that provides the coral with color—is also affecting the long-term fertility of the coral the scientists reveal in the latest issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series.