It is “the most detailed assessment of the status of the world’s coral reefs to date”, pulling together more than 21.1 million observations from 87,299 surveys, representing 36,886 sites across 124 countries.

The proportion of reef surface covered by living coral has fallen by 9.5 percent, compared with just the 1980–2009 average.

The largest global assessment of coral reefs reveals a distressing decline of nearly 10% between 2020-24. With warming oceans leaving reefs less time to recover, the future looks…