A months-long marine heatwave had “cooked” the sprawling Ningaloo Reef, ocean scientist Kate Quigley said, part of a world heritage-listed marine park renowned for vibrant corals and migrating whale sharks.
“Warm oceans have just cooked the corals this year,“ Quigley told AFP.
“It has gone deep, it’s not just the top of the reef that is bleaching. Many different species of coral are bleaching.”
The unfolding mass bleaching looked to be the worst since 2011, Quigley said.
Rising temperatures shot past the “bleaching threshold” sometime in mid-January, according to monitoring by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Bleaching is a sickness, but it does not mean outright death,“ said Quigley, a research scientist with environment-focused charity Minderoo Foundation.
'Just shocking'
Quigley said the Ningaloo Reef and the Great Barrier Reef were shaped by different weather patterns -- and it was rare to see bleaching on both at the same time.
“It’s just shocking. When we take a national snapshot, it’s extremely concerning.”
Quigley said the extent of damage on the Great Barrier Reef was not currently widespread enough to be considered “mass bleaching“.
A prolonged global episode of heat-related bleaching impacted almost 80 percent of the world's coral reefs between 2023 and 2024, a leading US science agency found in October.
The average sea surface temperature around Australia was the “highest on record” in 2024, an Australian National University study reported last week.
But it is increasingly suffering from more intense heatwaves, bushfires and drought, which scientists have linked to climate change.
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