(Photo: AFP)PARIS - A study published on Tuesday showed that more than half of the world’s coral reefs were bleached between 2014 and 2017 — a record-setting episode now being eclipsed by another series of devastating heatwaves. The analysis concluded that 51% of the world’s reefs endured moderate or worse bleaching while 15% experienced significant mortality over the three-year period known as the “Third Global Bleaching Event”. It was “by far the most severe and widespread coral bleaching event on record”, said Sean Connolly, one the study’s authors and a senior scientist at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “2014-17 was the first record of a global coral bleaching event lasting much beyond a single year,” the study said. “We are only just beginning to analyse bleaching and mortality observations from the current bleaching event,” Connolly told AFP.

Source: Bangkok Post February 10, 2026 14:04 UTC