What type of ecosystem is the Great Barrier Reef?

What type of ecosystem is the Great Barrier Reef?

coral reef ecosystem
The Great Barrier Reef includes the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem with some 3000 coral reefs. Corals are marine invertebrates that are part of the same group as jellyfish and sea anemones. Corals are colonial animals (or polyps), where many coral polyps group together to form a coral colony.

Does New Caledonia have coral reefs?

New Caledonia, a remote French overseas territory in the South Pacific Ocean, is home to some of the healthiest and most biodiverse coral reefs on Earth, including the world’s most diverse concentration of coral species and the second-largest barrier reef on the planet.

What animals live in the New Caledonia Barrier Reef?

These include humpback whales, dugongs, large sharks, sea turtles, manta rays, Napoleon wrasse, sea snakes, and seabirds. These species depend on healthy habitats for feeding, nesting, reproducing, and migrating.

Why is the New Caledonia Barrier Reef important?

The Natural Park of the Coral Sea protects 1.3 million square kilometers (502,000 square miles) of marine ecosystems essential to the people, biodiversity and climate resilience of the southwest Pacific islands.

How does the ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef work?

Barrier reefs enable inner sea grass beds and mangroves to thrive by buffering them from rough seas. In turn, these formations prevent contaminants from entering the fragile ecosystem and smothering the coral by capturing nutrients and sediments in runoff. They also serve as a nursery for many of the reef’s residents.

Where is New Caledonia Barrier Reef?

South Pacific
The New Caledonian barrier reef is a barrier reef located in New Caledonia in the South Pacific, being the longest continuous barrier reef in the world and the third largest after the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef.

What type of reef is the New Caledonia?

The tropical lagoons and coral reefs of New Caledonia are an outstanding example of high diversity coral reef ecosystems and form one of the three most extensive reef systems in the world.

What are the main threats to the Great Barrier Reef?

Climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, threatening its very existence.

• Water quality. Increasing sediment, nutrients and contaminants, combined with rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification are damaging the Reef.
• Crown of Thorns Starfish.
• Coastal development.

What is important about the coral bleaching currently going on in the New Caledonia Barrier Reef?

Warm water temperatures caused by a combination of long-term climate change and short-lived weather phenomena like El Niño deserve the blame for the current bleaching episode. The corals in the New Caledonia Barrier Reef have been lucky by most measures—a drop in local temperatures has allowed many of them to recover.