‘Significant event': Coral bleaching returns to the Great Barrier Reef

Coral bleaching returns to the Great
 Barrier Reef: Richard Fitzpatrick
surveys the toll near Cairns. 

Parts of the Great Barrier Reef are enduring sustained periods of heat stress worse than at the same time during last year's record-breaking coral bleaching event, raising fears the natural wonder may suffer another hammering.

Some 54 checks by the reef's Marine Park Authority off Mission Beach, about midway between Cairns and Townsville, found 60 per cent of sensitive coral species were already bleaching after 12 months of sustained abnormally warm temperatures.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘Significant event': Coral bleaching returns to the Great Barrier Reef.”