Pacific corals in 'worrying' state – researchers

PARIS (AFP) – A survey of Pacific corals has found many severely bleached, some near-dead, according to marine researchers who warned Wednesday that global warming threatened the precious ecosystem's very survival.

An in-depth probe along a 50,000kilometre (31,000-mile) stretch of the Pacific found that up to 90 percent of some coral colonies around the Samoan islands had been bleached.

Around the Tuamotu archipelago, up to half of colonies are bleached, according to researchers on board the French research schooner Tara.

Around the islands of Tuvalu and Kiribati, sections of reef were dead by the time the team got there.

Even in more temperate waters to the north, reefs did not escape bleaching, said the team, with up to 70 percent of corals damaged around Okinawa, Japan.

"All along Tara's Pacific route, we observed coral deaths and very serious bleaching," Tara scientific director Serge Planes of the French CNRS research institute told AFP in Paris, where the report was released.

Corals make up less than one percent of Earth's marine environment, but are home to an estimated 25 percent of marine life. They act as nurseries for many species of fish.

Corals are tiny, invertebrate marine creatures that live in colonies and require algae to survive. The algae live on the corals, providing them with food and the bold colours that reefs are known for.