Seaweeds responsible for slow growth of Caribbean reefs

Australian marine scientists say fast-blooming seaweed is the main reason the Caribbean’s coral reefs take longer to recover from stress than Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in Australia and those in the Indo-Pacific region.

George Roff of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Australia says Indo-Pacific reefs have less seaweeds than the Caribbean Sea. His comments were contained in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE).

The study by the ARC, a world-leading research centre on coral reefs, includes survey data from the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean reefs from 1965 to 2010.