25 Mar 2025

Image description: Bleaching at Lakeside Reef Front, Ningaloo. Photograph: Zoe Richards/Curtin University / The Guardian.   Australia’s two world heritage-listed reefs, Ningaloo on the west coast and the Great Barrier Reef on the east, are experiencing mass coral bleaching events simultaneously. Reef experts are reporting the events as “heartbreaking” and “a profoundly distressing moment”, in […]

19 Nov 2024

Forty-four per cent of reef-building coral species globally are at risk of extinction, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species reveals following a global assessment announced at the ongoing COP29 UN climate conference in Azerbaijan.   Coral Reef at Marsa Gozlani site, Sharm el Shekh, Egypt. Credit: Renata Romeo / Ocean Image Bank   The conservation […]

21 Jan 2024

Covering 6.4 million acres, an underwater seascape of cold-water coral mounds off the southeast United States coast has been deemed the largest deep-sea coral reef habitat discovered to date, according to a paper recently published in the scientific journal Geomatics. The reef extends for about 310 miles from Florida to South Carolina and at some points reaches […]

14 Jun 2021

For the first time, grooved brain corals rescued from a disease outbreak and maintained in human care have been bred with wild corals that survived the disease, in a collaborative restoration initiative between scientists at the University of Miami (UoM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and The Florida Aquarium. This breakthrough research effort […]

09 Jul 2018

The UK has formally signed the Coral Reef Life Declaration, joining a global effort to bolster research and safeguard the world’s coral reefs from climate change, ocean acidification, human activity and rising sea temperatures. The UK’s intention to sign the Declaration was first announced in April ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, with the UK […]

16 Apr 2018

The Commonwealth meeting in London is generating a number of important agreements and initiatives. Spearheaded by the Prime Minister and the environment ministers this is a major push to invigorate and restore links with our former partners. Three items: 1.  Commonwealth unites to end scourge of plastic Countries from across the Commonwealth have today pledged […]

18 Apr 2016

The phenomenon of coral bleaching has been known for many years, however, the scale of the effects of the current El Nino warming has taken observers by surprise. The sheer geographic scale of this event and its clear visual impact are extremely worrying. This is ecosystem scale effect of climate change that many have predicted. […]