The Great Barrier Reef is suffering its most widespread bleaching ever recorded
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing its third mass bleaching in just five years — and it is the most widespread bleaching event ever recorded. Results from aerial surveys conducted along the 2,000-kilometer-long reef over nine days in late March, and released April 7, show that 25 percent of 1,036 individuals reefs surveyed were severely affected, with more than 60 percent of corals bleached. Another 35 percent of the reefs had less extensive bleaching. “This is the second most severe event we have seen, but it is by far the most widespread,” says marine biologist Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, who led the aerial surveys along with scientists from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. What is most concerning this year is that the southern third of the reef, which escaped unscathed in 2016 and 2017, is now extensively bleached, too. “For the first time we...