And, says the Sydney Morning Herald, more than three-quarters of the reef will have vanished within a decade:
A long-term investigation of the reef by scientists at Townsville’s Australian Institute of Marine Science found coral had been wiped out by intense tropical cyclones, a native species of starfish and coral bleaching.
Researchers warned that while the World Heritage listed reef was a dynamic system — with coral cover rising and falling over time — if the mass die-off continued less than 25 per cent would exist in 2022.
…
At 214 reef sites surveyed, the coral cover halved from 28 to 13.8 per cent between 1985 and 2012.
Two-thirds of the loss occurred since 1998. Only three of the 214 reef sites exhibited no impact.