Bleaching and mortality of reef organisms during a warming event in 1995 on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica
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| Author: | |
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| Format: | artículo original |
| Status: | Versión publicada |
| Publication Date: | 2001 |
| Description: | Coral reefs at the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica were affected during a bleaching event associated with the 1995 warming of the Western Caribbean. During doldrum weather in late August 1995, reef organisms at Parque Nacional Cahuita were 62% and 7.4% bleached and dead respectively, whilst 67.6% bleached and 8.2% died in the Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Gandoca-Manzanillo. However, Cahuita had the highest mean number of bleached (257 ± 51.1) and dead (30.5 ± 5.6) colonies in the surveyed transects, and bleaching was observed down to a depth of 20 m. The most affected species (>10% of dead colonies) were the hydrocoral Millepora complanata and the scleractinian corals Montastraea spp. at Cahuita, and Porites furcata, Porites porites and M. complanata at Gandoca-Manzanillo. Mean seawater temperature was between 30.5 and 31.1°C (0-18 m depth) during four days of observation at the end of August 1995. Coral reefs of the Costa Rican Caribbean coast have shown a rapid decline during the last 20 years due to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. The effect of the 1995 warming added more pressure to the already deteriorated reefs |
| Country: | Portal de Revistas UCR |
| Institution: | Universidad de Costa Rica |
| Repositorio: | Portal de Revistas UCR |
| Language: | Inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:portal.ucr.ac.cr:article/26330 |
| Online Access: | https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/rbt/article/view/26330 |
| Keyword: | Coral reefs bleaching warming coral mortality Costa Rica Caribbean |