Great Barrier Reef – Desdemona Despair

A diver examines bleached coral off the Keppel Islands, Australia, at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, 5 March 2024. Photo: Renata Ferrari / AIMS / Reuters

April 28, 2024

The widest-ever global coral crisis will hit within weeks, scientists say – “Now we’re at the point where we’re in the disaster movie”

By Catrin Einhorn 15 April 2024 (The New York Times) – The world’s coral reefs are in the throes of a global bleaching event caused by extraordinary ocean temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and international partners announced Monday. It is the fourth such global event on record and is expected to affect more […]

Top: Opal Reef in the northern Great Barrier Reef before, during and after the 2016 mass bleaching event. (left to right: September 2015, April 2016, November 2016). Bottom: Double Cone Island in the Whitsundays area of the Great Barrier Reef in 2014, post-cyclone Debbie in 2017 and mid-2018 (left to right). Photo: Taylor Simpkins / Australian Institute of Marine Science

September 1, 2019

Great Barrier Reef outlook downgraded to “very poor” as threats mount – “We’ve had ten years of warnings, ten years of rising greenhouse emissions, and ten years watching the Reef heading for a catastrophe”

By Peter Hannam 30 August 2019 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – The Great Barrier Reef is at “a critical point” with the marine park’s outlook downgraded on Friday from “poor” to “very poor” due to coral bleaching and deforestation. Climate change resulting in rising sea temperatures was blamed in the federal government’s five-year Great Barrier Reef […]