CANBERRA, Australia — Australian scientists say warming oceans this year have caused the biggest die-off of corals ever recorded on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. In the worst-affected area, 67% of a 700km swath in the north of the reef lost its shallow-water corals over the past eight to nine months, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies based at James Cook University study found. “Most of the losses in 2016 have occurred in the northern, most-pristine part of the Great Barrier Reef,” said Terry Hughes, head of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. “This region escaped with minor damage in two earlier bleaching events in 1998 and 2002, but this time around it has been badly affected.”

Further south over the vast central and southern regions, including major tourist areas around Cairns and the Whitsunday Islands, there was a much lower toll. Russell Brainard, chief of the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program at NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, told HuffPost that he believes the article was stressing the urgency of the condition of the GBR, but those who did not read the article with any context of the situation “are going to take it at face value that the Great Barrier Reef is dead.”

According to Tony Davis, and environmental reporter, “Reports of the Great Barrier Reef’s death are greatly exaggerated, say scientists, booing Outside Magazine.”

The Cornell Cooperative Extension at Rockland County tweeted their thoughts on the matter saying, “’Great Barrier Reef is Dying NOT Dead! “A credible plan to protect the reef must address climate change and start with a ban on new coal mines.”

Canberra insists it is doing more than ever to safeguard the reef, which is also under pressure from farming run-off, development and the coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish, committing more than Aus$2.0 billion (US$1.50 billion) over the next decade.
Scientists say warm seas around Australia's Great Barrier Reef have killed two-thirds of a 435-mile stretch of coral in the past nine months.