Lakshadweep archipelago’s coral cover declined by 50% over 24 years

A 24-year-long study of corals in the Lakshadweep archipelago has found a 50% decline in coral cover compared to 1998 as a result of repeated marine heatwaves, exacerbated by climate change.

- Jayashree Nandi

The study published in the journal of Diversity and Distributions said this decline was explained by reduced recovery rates after each bleaching event, despite coral mortality decreasing with successive events.

The paper concluded that the fate of corals in Lakshadweep will be determined by the return time of bleaching events, underscoring that urgent climate action is critical to secure the ecological integrity of tropical reefs.

The scientists leading the study, including Rohan Arthur and Mayukh Dey from the Oceans and Coasts Programme of Nature Conservation Foundation concluded that “the one thing reefs need to recover is time”.

“Without a pause in the frequency of marine heatwaves, whatever resilience tropical reefs have is likely to be short lived. Our results show that fewer corals die simply because less is available to die in later years,” they added.

“In the long run, we must call the crisis by its name and acknowledge that the integrity of tropical reefs, like the rest of global biodiversity, cannot sustain the seemingly impervious logic of the prevailing economic order. Without scale-appropriate radical policies, laws, and actions to address these ultimate causes, anything we do locally for reefs will be symptomatic and palliative fixes,” the scientists said.

Lakshadweep Archipelago has 12 coral atolls in the northern Indian Ocean.