Scientists from UTS and Charles Darwin University are joining forces under a new ARC Discovery Project to study the impacts of potentially dangerous underwater bacteria that like it hot.
Increasingly frequent marine heatwaves are making graveyards of Australia’s once vibrant coral reefs, mangroves and kelp forests as seawater temperatures around our island continent increase at four times the global average.
Emerging evidence has revealed a more insidious threat - that rising ocean temperatures may favor the spread and growth of a group of pathogenic marine bacteria, known as Vibrio, which can have negative impacts on both human and marine ecosystem health.
This consequence of marine heatwave events poses big risks to Australian coastal ecosystems, communities and industries from the tropical north to the temperate south.
Continue reading on UTS Newsroom: As the ocean warms, a microscopic threat is blooming