Global warming threatens Lakshadweep’s coral reefs

For most of us, thinking about Lakshadweep islands conjures images of pristine beaches, clear blue seas and fascinating coral reefs that are home to a diversity of plant and animal life.

This might not be far from reality but recent research questions how long will these serene islands remain the same.

A nearly two-decade-long study by the Oceans and Coasts Program of the Nature Conservation Foundation’s (NCF) has found that the absolute coral cover in these islands has reduced from 51.6% in 1998 to 11% in 2017, a staggering 40% decline.

They have found that the alarming rate of coral mortality and their shifting species compositions, combined with their slow rate of recovery, could severely limit their ability to resist future disturbances due to climate change.

“The enormous drop in coral cover is a result of repeated and increasingly severe climate change-related disturbance,” says Shreya Yadav, who along with Teresa Alcoverro and Rohan Arthur published their findings in the journal Coral Reefs earlier this month.

“By monitoring the same reefs since 1998 through a series of El Niño disturbance events, we found that the way a single reef responds to and recovers from a stressor can change drastically through time,” Yadav says.

“Reefs are infamously complex and dynamic systems, but our study shows that in the Lakshadweep, a changing community of corals in a warming environment has led to a four-fold drop in recovery rates since 1998,” she adds.