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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Australia's National Coral Bleaching Taskforce has warned that the Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its worst coral bleaching on record [bbc.com]. UNESCO recently voted not to add the Great Barrier Reef to its World Heritage in Danger list:

Evidence that Australia's Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its worst coral bleaching on record has renewed calls for the UN to list it as "in-danger". The National Coral Bleaching Taskforce says 95% of reefs from Cairns to Papua New Guinea are now severely bleached. It says only four reefs out of 520 have no evidence of bleaching.

[...] Experts say it is too early to tell whether the corals will recover, but scientists "in the water" are already reporting up to 50% mortality of bleached corals. Climate change and the effects of El Nino are being blamed for the rise in sea temperatures that causes coral bleaching. "What we're seeing now is unequivocally to do with climate change," Professor Justin Martin University of Queensland told the ABC [abc.net.au].

NOAA [noaa.gov] and Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] on coral bleaching.

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