Global coral reef coverage risks irreversible decline, new report warns

By Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters. Published On 31 Aug 202631 Aug 2026.

Key points

• The latest bleaching in 2023 was the most extensive on record, impacting 77 percent of the world's coral reef areas.
• The GCRMN's warning came as organisers of the annual Pacific Islands Forum confirmed that at least five leaders of the 18-nation group will skip the group's summit.
• "If we give them enough time, they ‌have the capacity to recover, " lead author Manuel Gonzalez Rivero remarked.
• "Since 2010, there has ⁠been a very steep change."
• Coral reefs are critical barometers for global ocean health, supporting more than 25 percent of all marine life despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean floor.

Coral reefs are experiencing bleaching events so frequently that they no longer have time to recover before the next one strikes, scientists have cautioned.

Global coral cover is now well below ⁠normal levels and at risk of irreversible decline, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) remarked in a report issued on Monday.

"If we give them enough time, they ‌have the capacity to recover, " lead author Manuel Gonzalez Rivero remarked. "But we haven't seen that amount of time being allowed. In fact, the frequency of those bleaching events has pretty much doubled."

Bleaching occurs when corals expel the colourful algae living in their tissues. Without this algae, they become vulnerable to starvation and disease. Bleached coral are not dead, but they need time in cooler water to recover.

"We had 40 years of coral cover around the world that had remained relatively unchanged until 2010, " remarked Gonzalez Rivero, a scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. "Since 2010, there has ⁠been a very steep change."

Notably, the latest bleaching in 2023 was the most extensive on record, impacting 77 percent of the world's coral reef areas.

Rivero cautioned that another such event is "very likely" this year given elevated temperatures globally.

Notably, the GCRMN's warning came as organisers of the annual Pacific Islands Forum confirmed that at least five leaders of the 18-nation group will skip the group's summit.

In practice, the forum has been touted for decades as a symbol of regional unity, and is applied to discuss pressing matters facing Pacific states, including climate change and ocean health.

In short, global coral reef coverage risks irreversible decline, new report warns is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.