A Good Reason to Drop Everything and go Snorkeling in Australia

                                                                      You'll be sorry when it's gone....
Go right now.  

Go to your closet, find your snorkeling gear, dust it off, pack it up with a sunhat, your swimsuit and  flip flops, buy a plane ticket, fly to the western Pacific and settle into a bungalow by a tropical beach.  Then wake up, get on your swimsuit, walk out to the beach,  put on your snorkeling gear and flippers, and slip into the water.   Swim out a bit, stop, spit in your mask and poke it around with your finger until the glass is clear, put the mask back on and adjust it so fits well, and then swim out farther.  When you get to the reef, put your head down and dive down to look at the coral and the fish.  See how many colors you can find---red, yellow, orange, purple, mauve, blue.  Then find even more colors.

Go right now or it might be too late.

Go to Hawaii and Palau and Australia and Tahiti and New Guinea and the Phillipines.  Go to the Coral Sea Islands.  Go to the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Go to the Red Sea.  Go to Aruba, Bonaire, Antigua and the Cayman Islands.  Go to the Line Islands, Belize, New Caledonia, Andros and Nassau.  Go to the Zhongshan Island, the Great Chagos Bank, Saya Del Malha and the Reed Bank.   Go now. 

A global coral bleaching event is going on right now. The world reached a record warm temperature in 2014, and the oceans are now so warm that corals can't take it. The corals are stressed, vast areas of corals are bleaching and losing their colors, and some corals will die. Small, local coral bleaching events happen every few years, but this coral bleaching event will be global. It will be the worst coral bleaching event in 20 years.

Bleaching started months ago on reefs in the Northern Marianas Islands, Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Hawaii, Kiribati and Florida. Right now bleaching is going on in the Southern Pacific Ocean, including on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

What are you waiting for?  We're in the middle of a massive global coral bleaching event, and even stronger bleaching events are likely to occur in future years as global warming intensifies---doesn't it make you want to put on your snorkeling gear and paddle out to a coral reef to see the incredible colors of the corals and the fish right now?