Bleaching occurs when stress—usually heat—causes corals to expel the symbiotic algae that provide them with food. Coral can recover from this if conditions quickly return to their liking, but ...

A bleached coral's white skeleton is fully exposed, making the animal look dead. ... When a coral dies, algae takes over the animal's leftover skeleton. Cherdchanok Treevanchai / Getty Images.

In corals with symbiotes, however, levels of nitrogen-15 are slightly lower than usual due to chemical processes carried out by the algae. This signature is preserved in the coral’s skeleton, allowing ...

Unprecedented levels of bleaching have wiped out coral and left “football fields of animal skeletons” at a major research ...

University of Hawaii researchers said ground water flowing into the ocean at just the right amount can boost the growth of ...

Tropical coral reefs encrust the coastlines of islands and continents near Earth’s equator but this zone, which has offered sufficient light and warmth for corals to evolve over hundreds of millions ...

Discover how an algae-based gel enhances coral restoration by attracting larvae to damaged reefs, increasing settlement rates by up to 20 times.

Scientists from the University of Miami, the Florida Aquarium, and Tela Coral in Honduras are transplanting crossbred coral ...

What is Coral Bleaching? This is where things get tricky, as Maiya discovers in “Weathered.” The algae like a comfortable work environment — and when oceans get too warm (around 90° F or 32 ...

To survive, coral and their algae maintain a tight relationship, but when ocean water gets too hot, the algae often jump ship, leaving just the white coral skeleton behind, a phenomenon called ...

Algae grow faster than coral, so without the balancing effect of herbivory they can easily overrun a reef, preventing new corals from settling and shading out those colonies that do.