Causing Tissue Necrosis News Today

Pollutants from burning fossil fuels have been found embedded in corals, for the first time, offering scientists a potential new tool to track the history of pollution, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

Scientists have mapped the largest coral reef deep in the ocean, stretching hundreds of miles off the U.S. Atlantic coast.

Just like us, corals breathe in oxygen and eat organic carbon. And just like us, as a byproduct of converting energy and oxygen in the body, corals produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), a family of chemical compounds that are naturally made by cells during cell division, while fighting off pathogens, and performing other physiological functions.

An estimated 50,000 shipwrecks can be found around the UK's coastline and have been acting as a hidden refuge for fish, corals and other marine species in areas still open to destructive bottom towed fishing, a new study has shown.

Algae living within the soft tissue of coral supply much of the energy needed by their hosts, and some symbiotic algae help coral withstand warmer water better than others. In a recently published study led by the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, researchers have found that there was a tradeoff for corals dominated by the thermally sensitive algae—they have higher growth, but only in cooler water.

A new study has revealed that these lakes are also contaminated by microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic that can harm the environment and health.

Coral on the Great Barrier Reef has regrown strongly after the big losses of 2016 and 2017, when water temperatures were significantly above the long-term average. While this is good news, it's largely luck. The reef experienced mass bleaching in 2020 and 2022, but temperatures cooled just in time to prevent extensive coral deaths.

Tourists acting as citizen scientists have helped a research team detect microplastics on remote Arctic beaches. The global scale of plastic production means that these tiny fragments of plastic are now ubiquitous, and scientists fear that ocean currents will cause plastic to accumulate in the Arctic, damaging ecosystems. But our knowledge of the scale and type of plastic pollution in the Arctic is incomplete.

In the face of global warming and other environmental changes, corals in the Atlantic Ocean have declined precipitously in recent years, while corals in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are faring better.

Microplastics, which are tiny particles produced when plastics weather and fragment, pose an increasing threat to ecosystems and human health