The world’s coral reefs have ever-shorter windows to recover between marine heatwaves, according to the most comprehensive assessment of reef health yet published.
The report, published by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) on Monday (31 August), is based on more than 21 million observations from 36,886 reef sites in 124 countries and territories, gathered over more than 40 years.
The proportion of reef surface covered by living coral (so-called hard coral) has fallen by 9.5 percent compared with the 1980–2009 average.
It fell from a little over 30 percent during the 2009 to 2020 period to 25.8 percent in 2024, which the report’s researchers attribute primarily to climate-driven heat stress.
Source: Australian Institute of Marine Science LTMP
