Item 1 of 5 A drone view shows bleached corals on the reef at the Costa dos Corais, in Japaratinga, in the State of Alagoas, in Brazil, April 16, 2024. Brazil is bracing for what may be its worst-ever coral bleaching event as extremely warm waters damage reefs in the country's largest marine reserve, threatening the region's tourism and fishing revenues.
But huge swaths of corals have turned bone white along Brazil's vast Atlantic coastline from the northeast states of Alagoas to Rio Grande do Norte, including the 120-kilometer-long marine park called Coral Coast.Four scientists monitoring the corals told Reuters that this year was on track to be the worst bleaching on record for Coral Coast and possibly the entire country.
"The bleaching is intense," Pedro Pereira, coordinator of the nonprofit Reef Conservation Project, told Reuters between dives to survey the reef. Thousands of people in the region also work in small-scale fishing, virtually the only economic alternative to tourism, said Claudio Sampaio, who teaches fishing engineering at the Federal University of Alagoas.
The reefs previously have only been hit by one deadly bleaching event in 2019-2020, which killed up to 50% of the region's distinct species of brain corals and 90% of its Branching Fire Coral."A bleached coral would be something like if us human beings all of a sudden had transparent skin and organs. So you could see our bones underneath our skin," Mies said.