New Bleaching Reports Span 740-Mile Stretch Of Great Barrier Reef, From Lizard Island (N) To Heron Island (S)

Scientists are reporting corals are bleaching white and dying from rising ocean temperatures across a more than 1,000km stretch of the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science were preparing on Thursday to carry out surveys from a helicopter across the southern section of the reef.

Guardian Australia heard reports of bleaching at Lizard Island in the north and at Heron Island in the south – a distance of more than 1,100km (740 miles) along the Queensland coast. The reef has been through six previous mass bleaching events caused by global heating where rising ocean heat has turned corals white across large sections of the reef. The latest event, in 2022, was the first to occur in a usually cooler La Niña year. The authority has not declared a mass bleaching event for 2024 and said it would wait for further monitoring and the helicopter survey before deciding if reef-wide surveys were needed.

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Dr Anne Hoggett is director of the Australian Museum’s Lizard Island research station off far north Queensland – an area badly hit by bleaching in 2016. She said over the last four years corals had regularly bleached but cooler weather conditions had come along “in the nick of time”.

“It’s happening again, but now it has progressed further than it has in the last few years,” she said. “We have a lot of corals that are flourescing [another sign of heat stress in some corals] and some are pure white. Today we noticed some coral death. They’re now beginning to die. “We are desperately hoping for a change [in the weather] but the forecast is not looking good.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/22/bleaching-fears-along-1000km-stretch-of-the-great-barrier-reef