CANBERRA, April 5 (Xinhua) -- Coral reefs can recover from bleaching events caused by marine heatwaves given enough time, Australian research has found.

In a study published on Friday, researchers from government agency the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and University of Western Australia (UWA) identified cycles during which coral numbers crashed due to bleaching then slowly recovered.

Coral bleaching is a process whereby corals expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues due to heat stress caused by rising ocean temperatures, causing the coral to turn completely white. According to the AIMS, prolonged or extreme bleaching events can cause coral to die.

However, after gathering data at the remote Scott Reefs in the Timor Sea between Australia and Indonesia over the course of 30 years, AIMS researchers found coral can fully recover from bleaching events.

Coral reef systems are among the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, occupying less than 0.1 percent of the world's ocean area but supporting 25 percent of life in the ocean.

Luke Thomas, an AIMS coral scientist, said the findings offered hope for coral reefs including the Great Barrier Reef.

"It speaks to the resilience of these ecosystems that there's this inherent ability to recover from disturbances," he said in a media release.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and AIMS in March confirmed the Great Barrier Reef -- the largest coral reef in the world and a World Heritage Site -- was experiencing a mass bleaching event for the fifth time in eight years as a result of global warming and climate patterns.

Thomas said that despite the discovery that coral can recover from bleaching, climate change is approaching a tipping point where reefs will not have enough time between events to do so.

"If there are recurrent disturbances and the corals can't recover, these ecosystems will collapse," he said.

The research was one of the most detailed coral monitoring studies conducted anywhere in the world. Enditem

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