Overview
- Researchers working with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Macquarie University identified roughly 166,000 square kilometres of reefs with the capacity to resist or recover from warming across 71 countries and 100 territories.
- The analysis was built from more than 45,000 field surveys spanning 1960–2025 combined with climate and ocean data to produce a far more detailed global map than previous efforts.
- About 60% of the mapped resilient reef area is concentrated in Australia, the Bahamas, Cuba, Indonesia and the Philippines.
- Authors say the map can guide limited conservation funding and national '30 by 30' targets by showing where to protect, restore or, in some cases, prioritise triage because only about 28% of these reefs are inside existing protected areas.
- The study is under peer review and the team warns the results rely on historical patterns that may miss novel future responses while a strengthening El Niño and continued warming still pose acute risks to reef recovery.