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A28 SCIENCE
Saturday 7 March 2020

Great Barrier Reef enters crucial period in coral bleaching

By ROD McGUIRK Administration Coral Reef
Associated Press Watch scientist William
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) Skirving said Friday.
— The Great Barrier Reef is "It's certainly an end-to-end
facing a critical period of bleaching event with se-
heat stress over the coming vere bits at each end and
weeks following the most it's not looking good for the
widespread coral bleach- southern end, but it really
ing the natural wonder has depends on the weather
ever endured, scientists in the next two weeks," he
said Friday. said.
David Wachenfeld, chief Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a
scientist at the Great Barrier scientist from the Australian
Reef Marine Park Authority, Research Council Center
the government agency for Excellence in Coral Reef
that manages the coral Studies, said how much of
expanse off northeast Aus- the bleached coral would
tralia, said ocean tempera- recover and how much
tures over the next month would die would not be
will be crucial to how the known for weeks.
reef recovers from heat- "I'm very worried about the
induced bleaching. situation given how warm
"The forecasts ... indicate This Sept. 10, 2001, file photo shows Agincourt Reef, located about 30 miles off the coast near the the temperatures are on
that we can expect ongo- northern reaches of the 1,200-mile long Great Barrier Reef. the Great Barrier Reef and
ing levels of thermal stress Associated Press what the projections are,"
for at least the next two Hoegh-Guldberg said.
weeks and maybe three or were 0.5 to 1.5 degrees The authority has received 1998. The most deadly were "If it cools down a bit, they'll
four weeks," Wachenfeld Celsius (0.9 to 2.7 degrees 250 reports of sightings of the most recent, in consec- recover or, if not, we may
said in a weekly update on Fahrenheit) above the bleached coral due to el- utive summers in 2016 and head off into something
the reef's health. March average. evated ocean tempera- 2017. not too different from 2016
"So this still is a critical time In parts of the marine park tures during an unusually Scientists fear the latest cor- and 2017. We're right at the
for the reef and it is the in the south close to shore hot February. al death rate could match fork in the road," he added.
weather conditions over which avoided the ravag- The 345,400-square kilome- those events. The Great Barrier Reef Ma-
the next two to four weeks es of previous bleachings, ter (133,360-square mile) "At the moment, it's defi- rine Park Authority last year
that will determine the final ocean temperatures were World Heritage-listed color- nitely the most extensive downgraded its outlook for
outcome," he said. 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 ful coral network has been bleaching event we've the corals' condition from
Ocean temperatures to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) devastated by four coral ever had," U.S. National "poor" to "very poor" due to
across most of the reef above average. bleaching events since Oceanic and Atmospheric warming oceans.q

Meet Perseverance: Mars rover

gets name ahead of July launch

By MARCIA DUNN The human race will always ored with space at age
AP Aerospace Writer persevere into the future." 11 while attending Space
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) NASA's associate adminis- Camp in Huntsville, Ala-
— NASA's next Mars rover fi- trator for science missions, bama. That's when video
nally has a name. Persever- Thomas Zurbuchen, noted games took a back seat.
ance, a six-wheeled robot- that the space agency's He said he wants to be-
ic explorer, will blast off this Curiosity rover has been come an engineer and
summer to collect Martian roaming around Mars since work for NASA.
samples for eventual return 2012, when Alex and his The rover is undergoing fi-
to Earth. classmates were babies or nal preparations at NASA's
The name was suggested little kids. Kennedy Space Center.
In this Dec. 17, 2019 photo made available by NASA, engineers by Alex Mather, a Virginia "Perseverance and curiosi- The nameplate will be on
watch the first driving test for the Mars 2020 rover in a clean seventh-grader, as part of ty together are what explo- the rover's robot arm and
room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. a naming contest for U.S. ration is all about," he said. serve as a protective rock
Associated Press schoolchildren. The U.S. Nearly 4,700 volunteer guard.q
space agency announced judges had narrowed a
it Thursday at Alex's school pool of 28,000 contest en-
in Burke, Virginia, and he tries down to 155 semifinal-
got to read his winning es- ists. Once it was down to
say live on NASA TV. nine finalists, the public was
"We are a species of ex- invited to vote online.
plorers and we will meet Mather and his family won
many setbacks on the way a trip to Cape Canaveral,
to Mars. However, we can Florida, to watch Persever-
persevere," Alex wrote. ance get launched into
"We, not as a nation, but space in July.
as humans, will not give up. The boy became enam-