Australia: Great barrier reef suffers worst annual coral loss in 40 years

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The Australian Institute of Marine Science said in its annual survey on Wednesday that, despite increasing coral cover since 2017, the coral deaths, caused mainly by bleaching last year associated with climate change, have left the area of living coral across the iconic reef system close to its long-term average. The change underscores a new level of volatility at the UNESCO World Heritage site. Mike Emslie, who heads the Tropical Marine Research Agency's Long-Term Monitoring Program, said the live coral cover measured in 2024 was the largest recorded in 39 years of surveys.  #teleSUREnglish #ClimateCrisis #GreatBarrierReef #CoralBleaching #EnvironmentalAlert

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00:00Australian authorities say the Great Barrier Reef has seen its greatest annual loss of life

00:05coral across most of its expanse in four decades of record.

00:10Australian Institute of Marine Science said in its annual survey on Wednesday that due to

00:15increasing coral cover since 2017, the coral deaths, caused mainly by bleaching last year

00:22associated with climate change, have left the area of living coral across the iconic

00:28reef system close to its long-term average. The change underscores a new level of volatility

00:34on the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Mike Emsley heads the Tropical Marine Research Agency's

00:41long-term monitoring program. He said the live coral cover measured in 2024

00:47was the largest recorded in 39 years of surveys.

00:53Australian Institute of Marine Science's long-term monitoring program has just released

00:57our annual report for our 39th year of monitoring the Great Barrier Reef and what we've found has

01:04been substantial impacts from the 2024 mass coral bleaching event. We divide the Great Barrier Reef

01:13into three regions, the north, the centre and the south and what we've found was the highest annual

01:20decline in live coral cover that we've recorded in our monitoring program in both the northern

01:26and the southern Great Barrier Reef. There were still losses in the central Great Barrier Reef but

01:32it was somewhat less than the other two regions at only 14%. So the northern underwent a loss of about

01:40a quarter of the live coral cover and the southern Great Barrier Reef was almost a third. So these are

01:45substantial impacts and evidence that the increasing frequency of coral bleaching

01:51is really starting to have detrimental effects on the Great Barrier Reef.

01:59The losses from such a high base of coral cover had partially cushioned the serious climate impacts on

02:05the world's largest reef ecosystem which covers 344,000 square kilometres off the northeast Australian coast.

02:16The climate change is the number one cause of these mass coral bleaching events. There is a direct

02:21link between the increases of global greenhouse emissions, rising temperatures, sea surface temperatures

02:29that lead to these heat stress events and mass coral bleaching.

02:36Emsaly's agency divides the Great Barrier Reef, which extension 1500 kilometres along the Queensland state

02:44coast, into three similarly sized regions, northern, central, and southern. Living coral cover shrunk by

02:53almost a third in the south in a year, a quarter in the north, and by 14% in the central region.

03:03So in recent years we have seen increases in the amount of live coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef.

03:09It has recovered from a previous bleaching event which finished in 2017. We saw increases through to

03:192024 where we recorded the highest levels of coral cover in the 39 years of monitoring.

03:26And because we came off such a high base, this has somewhat cushioned the impact of the 2024 bleaching

03:35and coral cover has declined to about near the long-term average. However, this isn't to underscore the

03:43seriousness of the impacts. While there's still a lot of coral cover out there, these are record declines

03:49that we have seen in any one year of monitoring. Corals can recover from bleaching. It does take months

03:58for that to happen. They reabsorb the little, tiny algae and start to recover. But it doesn't impose all

04:06these indirect effects on them. So they'll have slower growth. Because of record global heat in 2023 and 2024,

04:15the world is still going through its biggest and fourth ever recorded mass coral bleaching event on

04:21record, with heat stress hurting nearly 84% of the world's coral reef area, including the Great Barrier Reef,

04:28according to the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch.

04:36So far at least 83 countries have been impacted.

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