‘Bright white skeletons’: some Western Australian reefs have the lowest coral cover on record
- Written by James Paton Gilmour, Research Scientist: Coral Ecology, Australian Institute of Marine Science
Corals at Scott Reef in 2012, and at the same site during the 2016 mass bleaching.James Gilmour/AIMS
Diving on the remote coral reefs in the north of Western Australia during the world’s worst bleaching event in 2016, the first thing I noticed was the heat. It was like diving into a warm bath, with surface temperatures of 34⁰C.
Then I...