Are we forgetting early observations of coral bleaching?

Abstract

I argue that the first observed mass coral bleaching event on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) occurred in 1982. This claim should not be controversial given the expert testimonies and data collected at the time. However, the GBR mass bleaching of 1982 has been repeatedly and inexplicably absent from descriptions of the GBR bleaching history in recent peer-reviewed literature, government reports, and popular media. This is leading to a paradigm that severe, widespread coral bleaching began on the GBR in 1998, with that event impacting coral communities that had only been previously impacted by minor, localized bleaching. Here, I show that this paradigm is misleading, that mass bleaching during 1982 is consistent with the levels of heat and light stress that have sparked other GBR bleaching events, and that consideration of the full timeline of observed GBR mass bleaching is important for interpretations of community dynamics and potential changes in sensitivity to heat stress over time.