This activity explores images of a coral bleaching event, which serve as phenomena for learning about marine ecosystems, human impacts, and climate change.

Stressful environmental conditions may cause corals to force out their symbiotic algae in a process called coral bleaching. Though corals can survive short-term bleaching, their risk of disease and death increases. Human activities have led to an increase in coral bleaching worldwide. This impacts corals, coral reef ecosystems, and human communities that rely on coral reefs. 

The “Educator Materials” document includes background information and implementation suggestions for using the images as phenomena. The “Student Handout” includes the images and background information. Note there are two groups of images: the images used in the main activity (Figures a and c), which can be used to introduce coral bleaching concepts, and “extension” images (Figures b, d, and e), which can be used to explore deoxygenation as one cause of coral bleaching. 

The “Resource Google Folder” link directs to a Google Drive folder of resource documents in the Google Docs format. Not all downloadable documents for the resource may be available in this format. The Google Drive folder is set as “View Only”; to save a copy of a document in this folder to your Google Drive, open that document, then select File → “Make a copy.” These documents can be copied, modified, and distributed online following the Terms of Use listed in the “Details” section below, including crediting BioInteractive.