Last year's coral loss in the Caribbean waters supports the predictions, said Tyler Smith of the University of the Virgin Islands.

    "Given current rates of degradation of reef habitats, this is a plausible prediction, particularly given events in the Virgin Islands this year," said Smith at a meeting of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOCA) U.S. Coral Reef Task Force in St. Thomas.

    Researchers said global warming may be at least partly to blame for coral reefs's death.

    "Think of it as a high school chemistry class," Billy Causey, the Caribbean and Gulf Mexico director of the NOCA, said at the meeting that includes some 200 private and government researchers from the Caribbean, Florida and U.S. Pacific islands.

    "You mix some chemicals together and nothing happens. You crank up the Bunsen burner and all of a sudden things start bubbling around. That's what's happening. That global Bunsen burner is cranking up."

    More than 47 percent of the coral in underwater study sites covering 31 acres (12.5 hectares) around the U.S. Virgin Islands died after abnormally warm seas in 2005, said Jeff Miller, a scientist with the Virgin Islands National Park.

    A double punch of rising sea temperatures and increased pollutants, such as construction-site sediment runoff and toxins from boat paints, have kept coral from recovering, ultimately leading to its death, scientists said at the weeklong meeting. 

    (Agencies)