Huge stretches of coral reef around the world are turning a ghostly white this year amid record warm ocean temperatures. Coral reefs around the world are experiencing global bleaching for the fourth time, top reef scientists declared Monday, a result of warming ocean waters amid human-caused climate change. On Monday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed the world's fourth mass global bleaching event is underway - with serious consequences for marine life and for the people and economies that rely on reefs. Coral reef bleaching across at least 53 countries, territories or local economies has been confirmed from February 2023 to now, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and International Coral Reef Initiative said. It ...
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Australian scientists find coral bleaching in Great Barrier Reef’s far north
Australian researchers have found coral bleaching around six islands in the far northern parts of the Great Barrier Reef, after a government agency said last week a major bleaching event was unfolding across the world's most extensive reef ecosystem. Scientists at the James Cook University said on Friday they found only a few relatively healthy areas, mostly in deeper waters, after surveying sites at the Turtle Group National Park, about 10 km (6.2 miles) offshore the state of Queensland. "It was quite devastating to see just how much bleaching there was, particularly in the shallows ... (but) they were all still at the stage of bleaching where they could still recover as long as the water temperatures decline in time," lead researcher Maya Srinivasan told Reuters. Bleaching ...
Read MoreParts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef show highest coral cover in 36 years
Two-thirds of Australia's Great Barrier Reef showed the largest amount of coral cover in 36 years, but the reef remains vulnerable to increasingly frequent mass bleaching, an official long-term monitoring programme reported on Thursday. The recovery in the central and northern stretches of the UNESCO world heritage-listed reef contrasted with the southern region, where there was a loss of coral cover due to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) said in its annual report. Assorted reef fish swim above a staghorn coral colony as it grows on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns, Australia October 25, 2019. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson "What we're seeing is that the Great Barrier Reef is still a resilient system. It still maintains ...
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