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Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) recently published a paper detailing their observations of a major coral bleaching and mortality event that occurred on the deep reefs of the Clipperton Atoll, a remote coral island in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. This bleaching, which was highly unexpected, is driven by the upwards displacement of cold water to shallower depths than normal.

The researchers link the presence of this anomalously shallow, cold water to changes in easterly wind strength in the Pacific, and demonstrate that the variability in wind strength can explain other past observed bleaching events of shallow reefs in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Their study, which was recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, highlights that cold-water bleaching may prove to be a major threat to deep reef ecosystems over the 21st century.

A disturbing surprise in the remote Eastern Pacific

Alan Foreman and Nicholas Duprey, two postdoctoral researchers from Alfredo Martínez-García's group at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, conducted a scientific expedition to Clipperton Atoll in early 2023 to collect samples from Clipperton's shallow reefs.

This work, conducted onboard the sailing yacht S/Y Acadia as part of a collaboration with the Rohr Foundation, was aimed at retrieving coral cores and water samples in an area that will allow MPIC researchers to reconstruct changes in the size of oxygen minimum zones in the Eastern Pacific over the 20th century.

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