'Crisis': Climate panel flags Great Barrier Reef devastation

SYDNEY (AP) — It was the silence of the sea that first rattled the teenage snorkeler, followed by a sense of horror as she saw the coral below had been drained of its kaleidoscopic color. This once-vibrant site on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — a site she’d previously likened to a busy capital city — had become a ghost town, the victim of yet another mass bleaching event.

On that day in 2020, Ava Shearer got out of the water and cried. Today, with the release of a United Nations climate report that paints a dire picture of the Great Barrier Reef’s future, the now-17-year-old marine science student and snorkeling guide wonders what will be left of the imperiled ecosystem by the time she finishes her degree at Australia’s James Cook University.

“I definitely worry about it,” says Shearer, who grew up along the World Heritage-listed natural wonder off Australia’s northeast coast. “I fear there might not be anything for me to study.”

There is much for the world to fear in Monday’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which bluntly states that the Great Barrier Reef is in crisis and suffering grave impacts from climate change, with frequent and severe coral bleaching caused by warming ocean temperatures. The worst bleaching event, in 2016, affected over 90% of the reef, and a punishing succession of bleaching incidents has left the northern and middle portion of the reef system in a “highly degraded state,” the report said.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet — so large, in fact, that it is the only living thing on earth visible from space. It stretches over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 miles) and is home to more than 1,500 species of tropical fish, plus dolphins, whales, birds, and even giant, century-old clams....