Photo: Gergely Torda/ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

The Great Barrier Reef, off Australia’s east coast, is 1,400 miles long, covers 133,000 square miles and can be seen from outer space.  It may be dying before our eyes.  “We thought the Barrier Reef was too big to fail,” says Professor Andrew Baird, chief investigator at the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Australia, “but it’s not.” 

Since 2016, half of all coral in the Great Barrier Reef has died. The reef was blanketed by dangerously hot water in the summer of 2016, strangling and starving the corals, causing what has been called “an unprecedented bleaching event.” Then 2017 proved to be almost as bad. The two years was the first back to back bleaching events ever recorded. There are serious concerns that there may be another bleaching event in 2019.

Just as alarming The multiple shocks to the reef environment has diminished the coral’s ability to reestablish itself and to grow back. The Washington Post reports, that coral bleaching occurs when corals lose their color after the symbiotic algae that live in coral cells and provide them with nutrients are expelled because of heat stress. The longer this state of stress lasts, the less likely corals will recover.

Historically, after the damage from events such as bleaching or a hurricane, the remaining adult corals in the reef spawn trillions of larvae each year, which spread and slowly begin to revitalize the reef by replacing dead corals with new ones. But that’s not happening as it once did.

“It’s not too late to act, but time is running out,” Prof. Baird said, adding that without drastic climate action, reefs will be “fundamentally changed, as will everything.”

The Reef Pt 1: Is it too late to repair the Great Barrier Reef?