Bonaire Coral Bleaching?

[Tjack]

Friends just got back from Bonaire complaining about Coral Bleaching. This was their second trip, they mentioned a lot of dead hard corals. Has anyone else noticed this? What about Curacao?

 

[lmorin]

We were there in Jan. and dove Bari reef almost exclusively (did one boat dive on Klein). There were a small number of very white coral heads on Bari and nothing I noticed on Klein. The white coral heads were scattered around in a seemingly random distribution. They did not look dead, but could have been. Destruction, if that is what it was, did not seem systematic, as I would expect from a pervasive agent (e.g., increased temperature) acting on the reef. Actually, the generality that I noticed most was the absence of red algae. When we were in Bonaire last August, red algae looked on the verge of taking over the reef and a lot of sand patches at a bunch of dive sites. Gone or not visible in Jan.

 

[DonnaC]

Just got back a week ago. This was our first trip and therefore don't have a comparison but we did see lots of coral bleaching in the southern sites. Sad.
Much less of a problem at the northern sites such as Tolo, Oil Slick Leap, 1000 steps, Karpata.

 

[Skookumchuck]

We saw extensive coral bleaching during two weeks in November. Not all the bleached coral will die but with the warmest caribbean water temperatures on record many will.

 

[treefrogjeff]

We are there 4 weeks per year. Two weeks in August we say quite a bit of bleaching due to the warm water. We just returned two weeks ago and it has improved. Still a lot of corals bleached but we could clearly see a comeback. We also dove the south exclusively.