The Great Barrier Reef, a 1,400-mile World Heritage Site along
Australia’s east coast, is in trouble, and that trouble is growing to
proportions that might soon become impossible to alleviate. The colorful
corals that make the site an attractive destination are undergoing a
second consecutive year of bleaching and the effects of the bleaching in
2016 are significantly worse than previously estimated.
In an announcement Monday, the Australian government’s Great
Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said an estimated 29 percent of
shallow water corals died due to bleaching — caused by rising ocean
temperatures — during 2016. The number was revised upward from 22
percent, which was the estimate given in mid-2016.
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