Climate change kills Great Barrier Reef, nature's spectacular treasure no longer with us

New Delhi: The rising temperatures and increasingly acidic ocean water are severely affecting the large portions of the world's largest reef system.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been declared officially dead in an obituary written by environmental writer Rowan Jacobsen, for Outside Magazine.

The obituary read, ‘The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It harbored 1,625 species of fish, 3,000 species of mollusc, 450 species of coral, 220 species of birds and 30 species of whales and dolphins’.

The Great Barrier Reef was 25-million-year-old ecosystem which stretches for over 1,400 miles long with up to 2,900 individual reefs and 1,050 islands. It was the World’s only living structure that was visible from space.

Early this year, researchers have discovered that coral bleaching are affecting over 93 per cent of individual reefs. And it was the worst coral bleaching hit that impacted the Great Barrier Reef.