Sydney - Global warming could send Australia's corals migrating south to where the waters are cooler, scientists said Wednesday. Researcher John Pandolfi looked at the fossil record and found evidence that coral reefs shifted south along Australia's west coast during a warm spell 125,000 years ago.
"Back then there used to be rich coral reefs dotted all along the West Australia coastline, from south of Perth to north of Dampier," Pandolfi said in a statement. "When the seas cooled with the onset of the most recent ice age, many of the corals contracted north."
Pandolfi, a researcher at the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Perth, said that there would be no similar migration on the continent's east coast because there was no suitably shallow water south of the Great Barrier Reef.
Pandolfi's study is published in the international journal Global Change Biology.
Two million tourists visit the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland each year. According to Ray Berkelmans, a coral bleaching expert with the Australian Institute of Marine Science, all of Queensland's coral could be gone by 2025 if global warming keeps pushing up the water temperature.
"Background temperatures have reached the level where every summer we are getting to dangerous conditions," he said.
