Great Barrier Reef watchers anxiously await evidence of coral bleaching from aerial surveys

The full impact of coral bleaching across the Great Barrier Reef will become clearer this week as aerial surveys of hundreds of reefs are completed in the bottom two thirds of the world’s biggest reef system.

Aerial surveys this week are expected to reveal the extent of
coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef over the summer.

An aerial survey carried out last week over almost 500 individual reefs between the Torres Strait and Cairns revealed some severe bleaching of corals closer to shore, but almost none on outer reefs.

From Monday the spotter plane will head south over reefs where satellite observations and temperature readings have shown corals are likely to have undergone higher levels of heat stress than those in the north.

Scientists fear those corals could be found to have been badly bleached, as they are less used to higher temperatures and had escaped major impacts in 2016 and 2017.

Read the story from The Guardian by Graham Readfearn - “Great Barrier Reef watchers anxiously await evidence of coral bleaching from aerial surveys.”