What If All Coral Reefs Disappeared?

Written By Teacher: Elaine Makarevich

Elaine is a New Jersey educator with 30 years of teaching experience in grades K-6. The earth and the natural world have always been a focus of her life and throughout her career as her students learned critical lessons about their planet when visiting her indoor or outdoor classrooms.

Coral reefs are often called the "rainforests of the sea" because they support an incredible diversity of marine life. But climate change, pollution, and other human activities are putting these ecosystems at risk. What would happen if all coral reefs disappeared? This question can spark powerful discussions in the classroom about biodiversity, ocean health, and the interconnectedness of ecosystems.

For younger students, The Magic of Coral is an engaging lesson on coral reefs, their importance, and how to protect them. Students can also dive deeper with Coral Reef in a Box – an activity that teaches students about coral reefs and how they are being impacted by climate change. Research Lesson: Coral Reefs encourages high school students to analyze scientific research on coral reef threats, solutions, and conservation efforts.

These resources provide a foundation to help students understand coral reefs and the importance of protecting them for future generations.

Written By: MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, a part of MIT Climate HQ, provides the public with nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions.

Coral reefs are humming hubs of biodiversity. Although reefs cover less than 1 percent of the ocean floor, about 25 percent of known marine life is connected with them in some way, says Amy Apprill, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They are also one of the clearest examples of climate change’s impact on the natural world.

“If you ask a kid to draw a picture of what climate change looks like, they will often draw a bleached coral,” she says.

Reef ecosystems face a variety of growing threats. Local issues such as overfishing, irresponsible tourism, and poor water quality threaten the reefs. But the biggest danger to corals is climate change, and the ocean acidification and warming water temperatures it brings. In summer and fall 2023, for example, high temperatures caused mass die-offs of corals in the Florida Keys and across the Caribbean Sea. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018 predicted that most reefs would disappear if global warming reached 1.5 degrees Celsius, and effectively all of them would die if it reached 2 degrees.

Such a loss wouldn’t just be a calamity for biodiversity. It’s terrible news for humans, too.