The Basics of Coral Reef Resilience
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Coral reefs are built by tiny animals called coral polyps, which form a close, mutually beneficial partnership with algae living within their tissue, and this delicate partnership is highly sensitive to changes in water temperature, meaning reefs are particularly vulnerable to even relatively small shifts in their surrounding ocean environment.
Reef resilience, meaning the ability of a reef to recover after a stress event such as a bleaching episode, depends partly on water quality and partly on the surrounding ecosystem, since healthy populations of grazing fish and other reef dwelling species help control algae growth that could otherwise smother recovering coral before it has a genuine chance to regrow.
Protecting reef resilience generally means reducing additional, more locally manageable stresses, such as pollution, sediment runoff and overfishing of key grazing species, so that a reef has the best possible chance to recover naturally from the broader stresses it cannot be locally protected from, giving it every advantage available.