(The Hill) — Coral reefs around the globe experienced a mass bleaching event in the past year as the ocean continues to heat, according to new research.
Mass bleaching has been reported in coral reefs in at least 53 countries and territories in the Northern and Southern hemispheres since early 2023, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) said in a statement Monday.
Coral bleaching occurs when corals are stressed by changes in conditions — like temperature, light or nutrients — and expel the algae living in their tissues. This causes the corals to turn completely white.
The impacted reefs include those in Florida, the Caribbean, parts of the Eastern Tropical Pacific like Costa Rica and Panama, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, parts of the South Pacific, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Aden, researchers said.
This marks the globe’s second bleaching event over the past 10 years, with the last one ending in May 2017. This was prompted by an El Niño climate pattern that warmed the world’s oceans for three years, The Associated Press reported.
Researchers noted bleaching must be confirmed within each major ocean basin
