A late-arriving summer monsoon has cooled waters across parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, shielding it from further heat damage and allowing living hard coral cover to increase in northern and central regions between August 2025 and June 2026.
In the northern section, hard coral cover rose from 30 to 35.1 percent, while the central region climbed from 28.6 to 31.6 percent. The southern zone saw a slight decline, dropping from 26.9 to 26.4 percent.
The reef endured its sixth mass bleaching since 2016 in 2025, followed by regional bleaching in the north and center in early 2026. The cooling brought by the delayed monsoon in early 2026 helped mitigate further losses after widespread coral bleaching struck reefs from the Caribbean to the Indian and Pacific Oceans in 2024.