As an effect of global warming, Lakshadweep’s corals are getting bleached.
Corals are multicoloured marvels that add a heavenly touch to the seabed’s mosaic. But ‘coral bleaching’ is akin to white-painting a Picasso with a broad brush.
Sadly, this global phenomenon has swept Lakshadweep too. The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change told Parliament last week that at least three islands — Kadmat, Kavaratti and Kilthan — have experienced about 98 per cent coral bleaching.
This bleaching has been attributed to the ‘Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event’ or GCBE4, which began in 2023. This is an unfortunate development because some of the corals were recovering well after the third event, around 2010.
A 2021 paper on Lakshadweep corals notes that recovery had “increased significantly in the last five years” in Kadmat, Bitra, Kilthan and Bangaram Atoll islands after the 2010 mass bleaching event.
The Kadmat reef boasts the highest live coral cover of 64.5 per cent among the 10 inhabited islands.
Coral bleaching happens due to rising sea surface temperatures and ocean acidity, both of which are consequences of global warming.
Bleached corals are not dead and can revive, though recovery takes 6-7 years of undisturbed convalescence. The International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), a coalition of a hundred countries, stresses that “this global event requires urgent action”. The recently held 16th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP16) expressed “deep concern for the increased frequency of mass coral bleaching and the increasing risk of irreversible loss of coral reefs”.
The Global Coral Reef Monitoring network (GCRMN), an operational network of ICRI, demonstrated in its 2021 ‘Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2020’ report that largescale bleaching events are the greatest disturbance to coral reefs with the 1998 event alone killing 8 per cent of the world’s corals.
GCRMN has begun work on its next status report, to be released in 2026, and has called for data.