The Great Barrier Reef is suffering its most widespread bleaching ever recorded

The ongoing episode is the third mass bleaching event in five years
Great Barrier Reef aerial survey
Aerial surveys in late March of the Great Barrier Reef have revealed “by far” the
most widespread bleaching event to be recorded on the reef, researchers say.

ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR CORAL REEF STUDIES

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By John Pickrell

APRIL 7, 2020 AT 12:49 PM

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 have seen bleaching in all three regions of the reef — the north, the
middle and the south,” Hughes says.