What is Coral Bleaching?

Coral bleaching happens when corals, under stress from warmer water, expel the colorful algae living in their tissues, making them turn white.

What’s killing the world’s corals?

A study released on Oct. 5, 2021, by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), a U.N.-supported global data network, showed that the world already lost 14% of its coral on reefs between 2009 and 2018, an area of about 2.5 times the size of Grand Canyon National Park. The study attributes the loss mainly to coral bleaching. The hardest-hit regions are South Asia, Australia, the Pacific, East Asia, the Western Indian Ocean, and Oman.