Third-ever global coral bleaching event 2015
This bleaching event, which began in the north Pacific in summer 2014 and expanded to the south Pacific and Indian oceans in 2015, hit U.S. coral reefs disproportionately hard. NOAA estimates that by the end of 2015, almost 95 percent of U.S. coral reefs were exposed to ocean conditions that cause corals to bleach. An updated NOAA forecast issued in June 2017, shows that widespread coral bleaching is no longer occurring in all three ocean basins – Atlantic, Pacific and Indian – indicating the likely end to the global coral bleaching event.
