It is estimated that approximately 50% of coral reefs have been lost since the 1950s. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), an operational network of the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), highlighted a 14% loss of the world’s coral reefs in 2009-2018, driven by climate change and anthropogenic stressors.
On 15 April 2024, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) and ICRI emphasized the continuing decline of these critical ecosystems through the announcement of the world’s Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event. This event, the second in ten years, was confirmed by NOAA and ICRI’s network of global coral reef scientists.
Mass bleaching of coral reefs since early 2023 (Figure 1) has been confirmed in over 50 countries, territories, and local economies, including Florida (US), the Caribbean, the Eastern Tropical Pacific (including Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia), Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, large areas of the South Pacific (including Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Samoas), the Red Sea (including the Gulf of Aqaba), the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Aden. Reports have also been confirmed of widespread bleaching across parts of the Western Indian Ocean, including Tanzania, Kenya, Mauritius, Seychelles, Tromelin, Mayotte, and off the western coast of Indonesia.
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