The Vanishing Reef: Coral Decline and the Race to Save the Oceans

A historical timeline tracing shallow-water coral reefs from early observations of mass bleaching in the late 20th century through repeated global bleaching events, scientific assessments, and conservation attempts, up to the reported 2026 classification of almost all assessed reef systems as critically endangered. The throughline is the interaction of warming oceans, pollution, overfishing, and policy responses, showing how a slow-moving ecological crisis became a global extinction-risk story. This timeline was generated automatically by TimeStrands AI from Wikipedia research. Facts are sourced; framing may be imperfect.