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The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has published its Summer Reef Snapshot Report.Credit:Australian Marine Conservation Society

The Age andThe Sydney Morning Herald revealed last week thatthe Authority had delayed the release of the report until after the election.

It was also reported on Tuesday morning that the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had advised the reef body and another science agency that helped with the survey,the Australian Institute of Marine Science,that it would be preferable to withhold the report during the caretaker conventions that apply during an election period.

Experts criticised these delays and accused the department and agencies of failing to act in the public’s interest in order to protect the Coalition,which has faced criticism of its climate policies.

Caretaker conventions advise governments to avoid major policy decisions,significant appointments,and major contracts and undertakings.

But the Environmental Defenders Office said the guidance on caretaker conventions “does not show that there is any impediment to the release of the Reef Summer Snapshot”.

The reef survey is crucial because individual reefs that have been bleached multiple times are less likely to survive.

The Great Barrier Reef system is made up of hundreds of smaller reefs. The authority flew the length of the system and photographed 719 individual reefs. Of those,654 of them,or 91 per cent,showed coral bleaching.

Bleaching occurs when the sea surface temperature is too hot for too long,causing corals to expel the algae living in their tissues and turn white. Corals can recover if the sea temperature drops quickly enough.

The survey detected the most severe bleaching in the central region of the reef,around Townsville,where the proportion of the affected corals ranged from what the Authority called “major”,at 31 per cent to 60 per cent bleached,to “extreme” with more than 90 per cent bleached,located on shallow parts of reefs between Cooktown and the Whitsundays.

The most recent bleaching occurred during a late summer heatwave across far-north Queensland. There have been five mass-bleaching events – in 2002,2016,2017,2020 and 2022 – but this year’s was the first during a La Nina weather event,which is typically cooler than average.

Lissa Schindler,Great Barrier Reef campaign manager at Australian Marine Conservation Society,said it should be unacceptable to political parties that the reef continues to bleach.

“It should have been a welcome reprieve for our reef to help it recover and yet the snapshot shows more than 90 per cent of the reefs surveyed exhibited some bleaching,” Schindler said.

Climate Council research director Simon Bradshaw said the latest bleaching event “shocked the scientific community”.

“This is a wake-up call for Australians to think long and hard about just how much our nation’s woeful climate policy is costing us and to demand better.”

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