Among the 87 reefs surveyed for the latest report, average hard coral cover in the north increased to 36%, up from 27% in 2021, and to 33% in the central reef from 26% last year.

CANBERRA, Australia — More than 90 percent of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed this year was bleached in the fourth such mass event in seven years in the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem ...

Covering nearly 133,000 square miles (345,000 square kilometers), the Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef, home to more than 1,500 species of fish and 411 species of hard corals.

Coral in the Great Barrier Reef is resilient, and has been able to recover from past disturbances, the Institute said. But the stressors impacting it have not gone away for long.

Australia has experienced coral die-offs beginning in 2015 at the Great Barrier Reef, when heat waves there caused excessively high water temperatures a few years in a row.

This is coral spawning season – a time when the Great Barrier Reef creates the next generation of corals. In fact, as some scientists explain it, it’s when the whole reef has sex.

The Great Barrier Reef is protected by a network of marine reserves designed to conserve its biodiversity. These reserves protect critical habitats for many species, including the coral trout, the ...

They played natural coral reef sound recordings through loud speakers for 12 hours a day for 13 fish pairs; for another nine pairs, the recordings included 100 minutes of boating noise recorded ...