ABSTRACT
Although coral reefs of the Andaman Sea have in recent decades been subject to global factors known to impact the extent of live coral cover, such as increasing sea temperatures, short-term extreme temperature events and rising sea levels, nonetheless unlike many other reefs worldwide, there has not been any steady decline in cover. Indeed, over the last decade, the trajectory at sites which have been monitored is one of a pronounced recovery in live coral cover following an extreme widespread temperature-induced bleaching in 2010, restoring many cover values back to the early 1990s when records commenced. While susceptible to extreme bleaching events, Andaman Sea corals have been shown to display some resilience to rising sea temperatures, particularly those 2living in habitats subject to physical extremes such as highly fluctuating sea temperatures, inshore turbidity and aerial exposure. Such locations have been described as potential refugia where corals are adapted to cope with these physical stresses that in turn ameliorate the effects of elevated sea temperatures. Future climate scenarios and other anthropogenic influences will undoubtedly challenge these reefs with potential increasing frequency and intensity of El Niño Southern Oscillation and positive Indian Ocean Dipole events, modification of internal wave regimes and rising sea levels. A better understanding of the scope of corals to respond to a warming climate is dependent on closer collaboration of countries surrounding the Andaman Sea in research areas such as coral reef monitoring, coral growth and reproduction studies and interdisciplinary studies to establish patterns of larval dispersal that would identify sources and sinks of juvenile corals.
