Assessment of the 2024 marine heatwave on five reefs in the central Coral Sea Marine Park

Summary

Despite the significant heat stress experienced throughout much of the Coral Sea Marine Park (CSMP) in March 2024 (up to 16 Degree Heating Weeks), there appears to have been minimal or low levels of bleaching and mortality of corals across the five reefs surveyed in July 2024.

Recommendations

• Surveys in the next 6-12 months will be critical to determine the broader impacts of this heatwave on shallow coral communities within the CSMP, and the potential recovery of coral populations from previous bleaching events.
• Retrieving the temperature loggers deployed throughout the CSMP in February 2023 and February 2024 is critical to determine the levels of heat stress corals experienced throughout the region, and understand the responses of these communities to these disturbances. This would also enable us to groundtruth satellite-derived temperature data with in situ recordings of water temperatures.