Australia lowers Great Barrier Reef condition outlook to 'very poor'

Joe Gamp
·Contributor, Yahoo News UK
Updated
In this Nov. 25, 2016, photo, fish swim along the edges of a coral reef off Great Keppel Island in Australia. The government agency that manages Australia's Great Barrier Reef on Friday, Aug. 30, 2019, downgraded its outlook for the corals' condition from "poor" to "very poor" due to warming oceans. (Dan Peled/AAP Image via AP)
The government agency that manages Australia's Great Barrier Reef downgraded its outlook for the corals' condition from "poor" to "very poor" due to warming oceans (AP)

Australia has downgraded the outlook of the Great Barrier Reef’s condition from “poor” to “very poor”, due to climate change.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority's report, which is updated and released every five years, spells gloom for the 345,400 square kilometer (133,360 square miles) colorful coral network off the northeast Australian coast.

The site is being killed of by climate change and coral bleaching.

In this Friday Nov. 25, 2016, photo Australian senator Pauline Hanson listens to marine scientist Alison Jones, left, as she displays a piece of coral on the Great Barrier Reef off Great Keppel Island, Queensland, Australia. Australian scientists say warming oceans year 2016 have caused the biggest die-off of corals ever recorded on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies said Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, that the worst-affected area was a 700-kilometer (400-mile) swath in the north of the World Heritage-listed 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) chain of reefs off Australia's northeast coast. (Dan Peled, AAP Image via AP)
Australian scientists said warming oceans year 2016 have caused the biggest die-off of corals ever recorded (AP)

The study, issued Friday, stated the greatest threat to the reef remains climate change.

Other threats, associated with coastal development and human activity such as illegal fishing, were also recognised.

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An extract from the report reads: "Significant global action to address climate change is critical to slowing the deterioration of the reef's ecosystem and heritage values and supporting recovery.

"Such actions will complement and greatly increase the effectiveness of local management actions in the Reef and its catchment."

This is the great Barrier Reef.
This is the great Barrier Reef.

The Reef Authority chairman, Ian Poiner said. "The accumulation of impacts, through time and over an increasing area, is reducing its ability to recover from disturbances, with implications for reef-dependent communities and industries.

"The overall outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is very poor.”

Dying coral on Great Barrier Reef, Australia, photo
Dying coral lining the Great Barrier Reef (AP)

In April 2018, researchers warned in the journal Nature that global warming could make the ecosystems of the reef completely collapse.

A marine heat wave in 2016 caused catastrophic ‘bleaching’ on the reef which caused coral to die off.

It was followed by another heat wave in 2017.