PANAJI
With El Niño and rising ocean temperatures posing growing threats to coral reef ecosystems, scientists and conservation organisations have called for a coordinated national monitoring network to assess coral bleaching, mortality and recovery across India’s reef regions.
The need for a collaborative monitoring network was among the key issues discussed at a two-day National Coordination Workshop on Monitoring and Assessing El Niño Impacts on Indian Coral Reefs, organised by the CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), in collaboration with partner organisations, in Goa last month.
Growing threats
The workshop brought together scientists, conservationists, research scholars, representatives of State Forest Departments and scientific divers to deliberate on the impacts of El Niño and marine heatwaves on coral reefs and the need to strengthen India’s capacity to monitor their effects.
Coral reefs are particularly vulnerable to prolonged rises in sea surface temperatures. Sustained heat stress can cause coral mortality and damage reef ecosystems, threatening marine biodiversity and coastal communities.
Standardised protocols
Participants stressed the need for standardised monitoring protocols to generate comparable scientific datasets across India’s diverse coral reef regions. Discussions also covered institutional capacities, emerging technologies to detect coral bleaching, study designs and methods to track post-bleaching recovery.
Keynote presentations addressed the impacts of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the Indian Ocean, the role of scientific institutions in environmental governance amid climate change, and the importance of sustained coral reef
monitoring.
Emerging technologies
Technical sessions featured contributions from CSIR-NIO, the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and the Samudra Scientific Diving team, highlighting emerging technologies and approaches to monitoring coral bleaching. A panel discussion involving government research organisations, conservation foundations and funding agencies explored ways to establish and sustain a collaborative national coral reef monitoring network.
Workshop inaugurated
The workshop was inaugurated by CSIR-NIO Director Prof Sunil Kumar Singh in the presence of Goa Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Kamal Datta, CSIR-IMMT Director Dr Ramanuj Narayan and CSIR-NIO Biological Oceanography Division Head Dr Maria Judith Gonsalves.
