The recovery in the central and northern stretches of the UNESCO world heritage-listed reef contrasted with the southern region, where there was a loss of coral cover due to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences said in its annual report.
"But the worrying thing is that the frequency of these disturbance events are increasing, particularly the mass coral bleaching events," he said. In a key measure of reef health, AIMS defines hard coral cover of more than 30% as high value, based on its long-term surveys of the reef. In the southern region, however, which generally has higher hard coral cover than the other two regions, cover fell to 34% in 2022 from 38% a year earlier.
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