image: Bleached coral, British Indian Ocean Territory, 2015. At the early stages of bleaching corals maintain some color, but the algae in their tissues are much reduced or lost and they may starve to death in just a few weeks. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Nov. 13, 2015 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by M.D. Spalding at The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, VA, and colleagues was titled, 'Warm water coral reefs and climate change.' view more
Credit: Mark D. Spalding