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Why the Great Barrier Reef could lose almost all its coral in the next decade - thestar.com
SINGAPORE—The world's largest coral reef — under threat from Australia's surging coal and gas shipments, climate change and a destructive starfish — is declining faster than ever and coral cover could fall to just 5 per cent in the next decade, a study shows.
Rising acid levels a threat to coral reefs
Researchers from AIMS, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, say the Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral in little more than a generation. And the pace of damage has picked up since 2006.
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Globally, reefs are being assailed by myriad threats, particularly rising sea temperatures, increased ocean acidity and more powerful storms, but the threat to the Great Barrier Reef is even more pronounced, the AIMS study published on Tuesday found.
"In terms of geographic scale and the extent of the decline, it is unprecedented anywhere in the world," AIMS chief John Gunn told Reuters.
AIMS scientists studied data from more than 200 individual reefs off the Queensland coast covering the period 1985-2012. They found cyclone damage caused nearly half the losses, crown-of-thorns starfish more than 40 per cent and coral bleaching from spikes in sea temperatures 10 per cent.