{"id":13621,"date":"2025-08-08T11:49:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T06:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=13621"},"modified":"2025-08-08T13:38:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T08:08:01","slug":"what-is-the-great-barrier-reef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-the-great-barrier-reef\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Barrier Reef"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Great Barrier Reef Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Great Barrier Reef has recorded its steepest decline in hard coral cover in almost four decades, as climate change-induced heat stress, cyclones and outbreaks of coral-eating starfish drive the ecosystem to the brink.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Great Barrier Reef<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a <\/span><b>complex of coral reefs, shoals, and islets<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the<\/span><b> Pacific Ocean<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> off the <\/span><b>northeastern coast of Australia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the <\/span><b>Coral Sea.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>longest and largest reef complex<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the world and is the <\/span><b>largest living structure on Earth.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It <\/span><b>extends <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in roughly a northwest-southeast direction for more than <\/span><b>2,000 km,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at an offshore distance ranging from 16 to 160 km, and its width ranges from 60 to 250 km.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has an area of some <\/span><b>350,000 sq.km. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It makes up about 1<\/span><b>0 percent of the world\u2019s coral reef ecosystems.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reef, which is<\/span><b> large enough to be visible from space,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> actually consists of some<\/span><b> 2,100 individual reefs and some 800 fringing reefs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (formed around islands or bordering coastlines).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It contains <\/span><b>400 types of coral,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 1,500 species of fishes, and 4,000 types of mollusks species.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reef is also <\/span><b>home to six of the seven known species of sea turtles,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> more than a dozen sea snakes, and nearly two dozen species of birds.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It also holds great scientific interest as the <\/span><b>habitat of species such as the dugong (\u2018sea cow\u2019) <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the large green turtle, which are threatened with extinction.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Much of the Great Barrier Reef is a<\/span><b> marine protected area, managed by <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the <\/span><b>Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority of Australia.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\">UNESCO declared the Great Barrier Reef a <b style=\"font-size: inherit;\">World Heritage Site<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 1981.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.downtoearth.org.in\/climate-change\/climate-change-drives-sharpest-great-barrier-reef-coral-loss-in-nearly-40-years\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DTE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Great Barrier Reef is located off the northeastern coast of Australia in the Coral Sea. Read more about Great Barrier Reef, Location, Country, Area, Latest News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":58669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2084,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-13621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-great-barrier-reef","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}