The Red Sea, circled by desert landscapes, is home to marine life accustomed to the water’s bathtub-like temperatures—often reaching 85 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.
The Red Sea, circled by desert landscapes, is home to marine life accustomed to the water’s bathtub-like temperatures—often reaching 85 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. But in the past three years, marine heat waves have made the Red Sea even hotter. Rising ocean temperatures, there and around the world, have been devastating for many sea creatures, including an iconic ocean duo: clownfish and anemones.
A new paper from a Boston University–led research team finds that this extreme heat has caused a breakdown in the mutualistic relationship of clownfish—also called anemonefish— and anemones and has resulted in a population collapse in the central Red Sea.
This pair forms one of the most widely recognized mutually beneficial relationships in the ocean—thanks to the hit movie Finding Nemo. They’re adapted to work as a team to get nutrients and for protection. Anemones also have a symbiotic relationship of their own—with a microscopic algae called zooxanthellae, the same algae that pairs with coral. Just like corals, anemones expel the algae from their tissue during periods of unusually high heat, causing them to bleach. The researchers found that prolonged bleaching can not only lead to the death of the anemone and the anemonefish, but collapses the entire mutualistic system.
Read More: Boston University
Photo Credit: congerdesign via Pixabay
