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Great Barrier Reef Suffers Another Massive Bleaching

VOA News

   The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is suffering its
   third mass bleaching event in five years, but the current global health
   pandemic has pushed the news of the major environmental crisis onto the
   back burner.

   New scientific data, confirmed by Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine
   Park Authority, shows ample evidence that overheating of the ocean is
   causing new damage along the world's largest coral reef system.

   The barrier reef takes up an area of about 344,000 square kilometers in
   the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. A third of the
   corals in the reef perished after the 2016 heat wave. Another heat wave
   hit in 2017.

   Coral live in a symbiotic unity with algae, which convert sunlight into
   food for the coral polyps and give the corals their distinctive color.
   The brightly colored coral islands, or atolls, are visible from an
   airplane.

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