‘Huge blow': Back-to-back bleaching covers two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef

Unprecedented back-to-back annual coral bleaching events have affected two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef, with this year's event already leading to mortality of half the corals in some key tourist tracts, scientists say.

The aerial survey plotted the health of 
some 800 reefs over 8000 km of flying. 

Record-breaking warm waters along the Queensland coast has triggered widespread bleaching over 1500 kilometres of the World-Heritage-listed reef over the two summers, said Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

Professor Hughes and his team completed aerial surveys last Wednesday after scoring about 800 separate reefs. The 8000km journey closely followed the path of the 2016 survey that found the northern regions of the Great Barrier Reef most affected.

This year, the worst of the bleaching is further south in the popular tourist sector between Townsville and Cairns. (See map below.)

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘Huge blow': Back-to-back bleaching covers two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef.”