Researchers say tens of millions of sponges may have been affected by protracted marine heatwave
Sea sponges, like coral, rely on symbiotic organisms that photosynthesise inside them, providing food for the sponge and sometimes deterring predators.outright, it evicts those organisms – lowering the chemical defences of the sponges and depriving them of food. While some species can recover from severe bleaching, Bell said others do not.
“At the northern and southern limits of New Zealand, we’ve seen the longest and strongest marine heatwave in 40 years, since satellite based measurements of ocean temperature began in 1981,” he said. “Seeing these unusually warm temperatures last such a long period of time is the really unusual aspect,” Smith said.
Smith said that attributing any single heatwave event to the human-made climate crisis was difficult, but ocean temperatures were rising around the world.
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