CORAL BLEACHING IN PENINSULAR MALAYSIA: A DECADE OF STUDY

Globally, coral bleaching events are increasing both in frequency and intensity, and are usually associated with Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies. The objective of this paper is to review coral bleaching trends and its consequences in Peninsular Malaysia’s waters over the past decade with the help of scarce government and reef monitoring program reports and published journal papers. Malaysia has experienced two Mass Bleaching Events (MBE) in the past decade—in 2010 (2nd global MBE) and between 2014 and 2017 (3rd global MBE)—it was estimated up to 5% to 6% of corals experienced mortality following each MBE. Branch corals (Acropora and Pocillopora) were susceptible to higher bleaching and mortality while massive corals (Fungia) were more resistant to bleaching. Long-term underwater temperature monitoring (2015-2019) with HOBO loggers across Peninsular Malaysia recorded maximum sea water temperatures below the threshold required to initiate coral bleaching. While the bleaching trend in the past decade has shown that corals in Peninsular Malaysia have largely escaped impacts of MBEs with minimal mortality, increasing ocean warming will ultimately lead to catastrophic MBEs across reefs of Peninsular Malaysia. This will lead to coral community compositions shifting towards more thermally tolerant taxa.