According to CNN on August 26, a pumice raft as large as Manhattan in the Pacific Ocean is moving to Australia. The marine life on the pumice raft can help restore the coral disappeared from the Great Barrier Reef due to climate warming.
Earlier, NASA Earth observation station found that an undersea volcano erupted near the Tonga islands in the Pacific Ocean. On August 9, a crew found this huge pumice raft while sailing. The Australian crew drove the roam catamaran to vanatu. They said they found many volcanic ash pumice of different sizes, small as marbles and big as basketball, which were densely distributed and covered the sea.
Pumice is produced by the rapid cooling of volcanic lava. As the lava hardens, gas is trapped in the rock, resulting in many pores. Lightweight rocks can float.
The crew of the rover, Michael and Larissa, told CNN that they had been floating at sea for ten days and found traces of gray pumice one night. " (the scene) it's really weird. The whole sea has no luster. You can't even see the reflection of the moon. " Larissa said, 'those pumice stones surround us, so we can't see our channel at all. We can only overlook the boundary where the pumice stones disappear.'
The two said that this huge pumice raft will drift to the Australian coast in the next 7 to 10 months. Scientists said that the pumice raft will have a positive impact on microorganisms on the Australian coast because marine organisms can 'settle down' on this pumice. When the pumice raft moves to the Great Barrier Reef, the marine organisms attached to the pumice raft will also move, bringing new barnacles, coral species and other species to the Great Barrier Reef.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), in 2012, Scott & sdot, assistant professor of Queensland University of technology; By studying a similar submarine volcano, Scott Bryan and his colleagues found that pumice is one of the ways in which the ocean distributes biodiversity. Brian said the volcanic eruption this month would have a similar positive impact. " Pumice is a natural carrier for marine species to survive, reproduce and grow in the new environment. " He added that this is a means of natural renewal, which occurs every five years.
He told ABC that when the pumice raft passes through the Australian coast in the next 7 to 12 months, it will be covered by many kinds of organisms, including algae, barnacles, corals, crabs and so on. " This is a way for healthy, young new corals to take root quickly on the Great Barrier Reef. "
In 2016 and 2017, climate warming heated the sea water, resulting in coral bleaching all over the world, and half of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef died.