El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a climate phenomenon that brings unusually warm water to the equatorial Pacific, stressing and often decimating coral reefs in its path through coral bleaching. Coral bleaching is a stress response by a diversity of coral genera, often associated with a period of prolonged elevated ocean temperatures (Glynn, 1993; Goreau & Hayes, 1994; Brown, 1997; Hoegh-Guldberg, 1999).
