{"id":321273,"date":"2025-08-06T01:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T01:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/321273\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T01:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T01:32:11","slug":"great-barrier-reef-suffers-worst-coral-decline-on-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/321273\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Barrier Reef suffers worst coral decline on record"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stressed coral will probably die if it experiences temperatures 1C (1.8F) above its thermal limit for two months. If waters are 2C higher, it can survive around one month.<\/p>\n

Unusually warm tropical waters triggered widespread coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 2024<\/a> and in the first few months of 2025, the sixth such event since 2016.<\/p>\n

As well as climate change, natural weather patterns like El Ni\u00f1o<\/a> can also play a role in mass bleaching events.<\/p>\n

The reef has “experienced unprecedented levels of heat stress, which caused the most spatially extensive and severe bleaching recorded to date,” the report found.<\/p>\n

Any recovery could take years and was dependent on future coral reproduction and minimal environmental disturbance, according to the report.<\/p>\n

In the latest AIMS survey results, the most affected coral species were the Acropora, which are susceptible to heat stress and a favoured food of the crown-of-thorns starfish.<\/p>\n

“These corals are the fastest to grow and are the first to go,” AIMS research lead Dr Mike Emslie told ABC News.<\/p>\n

“The Great Barrier Reef is such a beautiful, iconic place, it’s really, really worth fighting for. And if we can give it a chance, it’s shown an inherent ability to recover,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stressed coral will probably die if it experiences temperatures 1C (1.8F) above its thermal limit for two months.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-321273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}