Laura Núñez Pons

During the months of September-October 2014 at Oahu Island, Hawai'i (U.S.A.) our thermometers recorded one of the hottest summers since 1940. Consequently, reef corals around the island suffered an intense episode of bleaching, ever reported in years. From the Gates Lab at HIMB (University of Hawai’i at Manöa) we decided to study this outstanding event at Kane'ohe Bay. We have selected 9 patchy reefs from the bay and have deployed sensors for light, pH and temperature. Moreover we go out to the field 3 days a week and collect water samples for nutrients examinations, measure salinity, and conduct transects to follow the bleaching and the potential recovery. Interestingly, in most cases heavily bleached corals stand by totally healthy, brown unbleached conspecific colonies. In order to understand why some specimens bleach while others do not, in this environment of winners and lossers, we have tagged 10 pairs of each of the 3 major species at K-Bay of bleached vs unbleached corals in 3 locations, which are subsampled monthly for future physiological, genetic, and microbiologic analyses. We hope to bring light to better understand the dynamis of coral resistance to temperature rises.