Shayle Matsuda

So kind of how when we get sick, we'll get a fever, and that's good.

It's our body's way of helping protect us.

But if that fever gets too high or goes on for too long, that can actually be detrimental to us.

And the same thing is true with coral bleaching.

So as the corals are purging out these algal symbionts, it's not just all at a time.

You can watch a coral start to pale, losing its color, right, because as the symbionts leave, that white skeleton is showing through.

And then as that's happening, the longer it goes on, the corals aren't getting that energy, and they can begin to starve.

And what you'll see is if you go out into the coral reef when this is happening, if you see these corals that are white, you're seeing that skeleton through the tissue, but the tissue's still there.

The corals are still alive.

And if that stressor leaves, the corals have a chance to recover.

Those symbiont communities can proliferate again in the corals.

They'll repigment and be OK.

But if that stressor goes on too long,

the corals can die.

And we've seen this happen on massive scales on a reef.

And once the corals die, you'll start to see macroalgae growing on top of them.

And that's when the structure of the reef environment will then start to really break down.

And also, some corals aren't bleaching.

Some individuals, like in Kaneohe Bay during the 2014 and 2015 bleaching events that we had,

there would be two corals, the exact same species, right next to each other, like touching on the reef.