The world’s coral reefs are run­ning out of time to re­cov­er be­tween in­creas­ing­ly fre­quent ma­rine heat­waves and glob­al bleach­ing events, with cli­mate change dri­ving a long-term de­cline in coral cov­er, a new glob­al as­sess­ment has found.

The Sta­tus of Coral Reefs of the World: 2025, re­leased by the Glob­al Coral Reef Mon­i­tor­ing Net­work, draws on more than 40 years of da­ta, in­clud­ing 21.1 mil­lion ob­ser­va­tions from 87,299 sur­veys cov­er­ing 36,886 sites across 124 coun­tries, ter­ri­to­ries and economies.

The re­port found that every ma­jor glob­al coral bleach­ing event since 1998 has re­sult­ed in a de­cline in glob­al hard coral cov­er, with reefs on­ly par­tial­ly re­cov­er­ing be­fore be­ing hit by an­oth­er ma­rine heat­wave.