Remoteness does not enhance coral reef resilience, according to marine ecologists

Read the full story from the University of California – Santa Barbara.

There’s a widespread hypothesis that links the resilience of coral reefs with their remoteness from human activities — the farther away they are from people, the more likely corals are to bounce back from disturbances.

However, when researchers put that hypothesis to the test, they found it didn’t hold. No matter how remote some populations of corals were, on average they demonstrated no more resilience to acute disturbances than reefs with a greater human influence. And, contrary to expectations, there is some evidence that areas with greater human development may recover from disturbance faster than their more isolated counterparts.