Some areas of Great Barrier Reef are reporting their highest amount of coral coverage in 36 years of monitoring as it recovers from past storms and mass-bleaching events – including reefs in the Whitsundays.
Coral coverage is the proportion of the reef covered by sponges, algae, and other organisms – which has improved significantly in the northern and central sections of the 2300-kilometre reef.
Coral cover has reached record highs according to new data from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), part of a three decade-long monitoring mission.
Dr Paul Hardisty, CEO of Australian Institute of Marine Science, said he would categorise the story as “good and bad news.”
“The good news is obviously the north and central areas have reached record coral, and that signals the reef is resilient,” he said.
“The not so good news is the recent bleaching events in 2020 and 2022 signal the reef is in a different era than it was 36 years ago.
“The easy thing to take away from this story is: coral cover is as good as it was in the 80s. But are the conditions the same? No. We’re walking a tight-rope and that recovery isn’t going to continue unless we act to turn it around.”
Dr Mike Emslie, who leads the AIMS’s long-term monitoring program, elaborated: “the resurgence could be short-lived with the increase driven by fast-growing Acropora corals that are highly susceptible to bleaching, wave damage associated with cyclones and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish.”
"This isn't the first time the Great Barrier Reef has recovered. It's been seen before. The rate of increase has been seen before. But all it takes is another summer of bad bleaching or a cyclone, which we haven't had for a while, and things can change,” he said.
The latest monitoring report is based on surveys at 87 reefs between August last year and May this year. About half of that work was done before this year's bleaching event.
Dr Hardisty said there were three things we could do.
“Bring global emissions down as quickly as possible, continue to protect the reef’s resilience through crown-of-thorns starfish management, water quality, and the third thing is help the reef adapt to climate change,” he said.
“If you give the reef a chance, it can recover. If the disturbances like cyclones and bleaching come too frequently, it won’t.”
The Great Barrier Reef is showing its resilience in the face of increasingly frequent coral bleaching events, but scientists say it still needs our help
