1 3 Mar Biol (2014) 161:1385–1393 DOI 10.1007/s00227-014-2426-6 ORIGINAL PAPER Porites and the Phoenix effect: unprecedented recovery after a mass coral bleaching event at Rangiroa Atoll, French Polynesia George Roff · Sonia Bejarano · Yves-Marie Bozec · Maggy Nugues · Robert S. Steneck · Peter J. Mumby Received: 10 November 2013 / Accepted: 14 March 2014 / Published online: 3 April 2014 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 tissue rather than transitioning to old dead skeleton. Such rapid post-bleaching recovery is unprecedented in mas- sive Porites and resulted from remarkable self-regenera- tion termed the ‘Phoenix effect’, whereby remnant cryptic patches of tissue that survived the 1997/1998 ENSO event regenerated and rapidly overgrew adjacent dead skeleton. Contrary to our earlier predictions, not only are large mas- sive Porites relatively resistant to stress, they appear to have a remarkable capacity for recovery even after severe partial mortality. Introduction The impact of climate change has resulted in substantial changes to the world’s oceans, with an increase in average sea surface temperatures (Lough 2012) and the frequency of extreme warm events (Lima and Wethey 2012) over the past decades. Such climate shifts have led to intensi- fication of thermal stress events on coral reef ecosystems, with a corresponding increase in the frequency and inten- sity of coral bleaching events (McWilliams et al. 2005; Selig et al. 2010). The ecological impacts of these coral bleaching events have ranged from mild to severe, lead- ing to local declines in diversity (Loya et al. 2001), cata- strophic losses of coral cover (Edwards et al. 2001), shifts in community structure (van Woesik et al. 2011), and in some instances, localized species extinctions (Glynn 2011). Rates of recovery following coral bleaching events vary substantially across multiple scales, and may depend upon a multitude of factors, including pre-bleaching com- munity structure, localized stresses, and previous distur- bance history (e.g., Marshall and Baird 2000; Wooldridge 2009; Thompson and Dolman 2010). While rapid recov- ery has been observed at regional scales following severe Abstract The 1997/1998 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was the most severe coral bleaching event in recent history, resulting in the loss of 16 % of the world’s coral reefs. Mortality was particularly severe in French Polyne- sia, where unprecedented mortality of massive Porites was observed in lagoonal sites of Rangiroa Atoll. To assess the recovery of massive Porites 15 years later, we resurveyed the size structure and extent of partial mortality of massive Porites at Tivaru (Rangiroa). Surveys revealed an abun- dance of massive Porites colonies rising from the shallow lagoonal floor. Colony width averaged 2.65 m, reaching a maximum of 7.1 m (estimated age of ~391 ± 107 years old). The relative cover of recently dead skeleton within quadrats declined from 42.8 % in 1998 to zero in 2013, yet the relative cover of old dead skeleton increased only marginally from 22.1 % in 1998 to 26.1 % in 2013. At a colony level, the proportion of Porites dominated by living tissue increased from 34.9 % in 1998 to 73.9 % in 2013, indicating rapid recovery of recent dead skeleton to living Communicated by T. L. Goulet. G. Roff (*) · S. Bejarano · Y.-M. Bozec · P. J. Mumby (*) Marine Spatial Ecology Lab, School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia e-mail: g.roff@uq.edu.au P. J. Mumby e-mail: p.j.mumby@uq.edu.au M. Nugues Laboratoire d’Excellence ‘CORAIL’ and USR 3278 CRIOBE CNRS-EPHE, CBETM de l’Université de Perpignan, 66860 Perpignan Cedex, France R. S. Steneck School of Marine Sciences, Darling Marine Center, University of Maine, Walpole, MA 04573, USA