Status and Trends of Coral Reefs of the Pacific: 1980 – 2023

Status and Trends of Coral Reefs of the Pacific: 1980 - 2023

Title: Status and Trends of Coral Reefs of the Pacific: 1980 – 2023

Edited by: Jérémy Wicquart, Erica K. Towle, Thomas Dallison, Francis Staub, and Serge Planes

Date: 12^th June 2025

Institution: Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI)

Cite this report: Wicquart J., Towle E. K., Dallison T., Staub F., and Planes S. (eds.), 2025. Status and Trends of Coral Reefs of the Pacific: 1980-2023. Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) and International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI). doi.org/10.59387/WIUJ2936

This publication may be reproduced in whole or in part and in any form for educational or non-profit services, provided acknowledgement of the source is made. No use of this publication may be made for resale or any other commercial purpose without prior permission in writing.

Acknowledgments

The publication of this report would not have been possible without the encouragement and financial support provided by the French Ministry for Ecological Transition, the Gouvernement Princier – Principauté de Monaco, the Government Offices of Sweden, and the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative. We sincerely thank them for their invaluable contribution.

We would like to give our acknowledgements to the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) as the host of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN). We also acknowledge the guidance and support from the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) Secretariat, and the US Department of State, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the 2021-2024 ICRI co-chairs.

We further thank the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) for their continued support to the GCRMN Pacific regional node, the production of this report and continued advocacy for the conservation of coral reefs in the Pacific.

The coordination of this report would not have been possible without the support from MAREPOLIS and Blue Pangolin Consulting Ltd. And we extend our gratitude to the supporting agencies, organisations and programmes who have enabled the production of this report.

The production of this report benefited greatly from the organisation of a workshop held in Auckland, New Zealand (November 2023) and we sincerely thank James Nikitine and Gabriella Wina from the Blue Cradle foundation, and Anne Tessier, for their invaluable contributions to the organization of this event.

This report would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of all those who collected data on benthic cover in coral reefs of the Pacific over the last decades. We extend our deepest gratitude to them for generously sharing their data, which was instrumental in the production of this report. Their contributions are recognized in the following paragraphs or in the “Authors’ Contributions” section.

We thank the Reef Check Foundation, and its volunteers who have spent countless hours collecting these data.

We thank the Service National d’Observation CORAIL from CRIOBE who kindly provided data.

We thank the National Park Service, Pacific Island Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, for sharing their benthic marine database. Funding for the collection of these data was provided by the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program.

We gratefully acknowledge the Ministries of Fisheries and Environment of the Government of Tonga, the Waitt Institute, the 100 Island Challenge, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the Vava’u Environmental Protection Association for generously providing coral reef monitoring data from Tonga.

We thank C₂O (Coasts, Climate, Oceans) Pacific for providing coral reef monitoring data, made possible through the support of the TasiVanua and Nguna-Pele Resource Networks, the Vanuatu Fisheries Department, and the Vanuatu Department of Environment, and funding from the PEBACC project (SPREP) and RESCCUE project (SPC).

This publication makes use of data products provided by the Micronesia Coral Reef Monitoring Program, the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority, the Marshall Islands Conservation Society, and the College of the Marshall Islands. The data analysis and interpretations presented in this report are solely that of the current authors.

We thank the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and particularly Emily Darling, Kim Fisher, Sharla Gelfand and Amkieltiela for the development of the MERMAID platform and their help with the use of the associated mermaidr R package.

We thank the ReefCloud team for their help on contacting project administrators within this platform, notably Samuel Chan and Manuel Gonzalez Rivero.

We are grateful to Murray Logan for his valuable guidance on machine learning models and for generously sharing an R script for visualizing grey ribbons on modeled temporal trends. We also extend our thanks to Jacqueline De La Cour, Gang Liu, Erick Geiger, and Liam Lachs for their insightful advice on the CoralTemp dataset.

Author Contributions

With thanks to the co-authors of the report: Mehdi Adjeroud, Mary Allen, Abigail Alling, Jeanine Almany, Phoebe Argyle, Mary Bonin, Jonathan Booth, Tracey Boslogo, Valerie Brown, Sara Cannon, Yannick Chancerelle, Liam Clegg, Anne Cohen, Kitty Currier, Thomas Dallison, Emily Darling, Alexandra Dempsey, Orla Doherty, Simon Donner, Sirilo Dulunaqio, Janelle Eagle, Graham J. Edgar, Andy Estep, Viliami Fatongiatau, Martin Finau, Amanda Ford, Michael Fox, Jan Freiwald, Beverly French, Antoine Gilbert, Yimnang Golbuu, Nicolas Guillemot, Tevita Havea, Tom Heintz, Eryn Hooper, Peter Houk, Alec Hughes, Sandrine Job, Johanna Johnson, Geoffrey Jones, Stacy Jupiter, Rocky Kaku, Malnoa Karo, Mohsen Kayal, Adi Khen, Kelly Kozar, Uali Kula, July Kuri, Didier Labrousse, Tonga Latu Tuiano, Florian Le Bail, Enelio Liufau, Katie Lubarsky, Sosefo Malau, Sangeeta Mangubhai, Derek Manzello, Ateliana Maugateau, Mark Mccormick, Sheila Mckenna, Jenny Mihaly, Carol Milner, Bradley Moore, Kirby Morejohn, Winfred Mudong, Elizah Nagombi, Yashika Nand, Stephe Neale, Victor Nestor, Mike Neuman, Poasi Ngaluafe, David Obura, Lizzi Oh, Thomas Oliver, Julie Pagot, Selma Pamalok, Michael Parrish, Nicole Pedersen, Lucie Penin, Serge Planes, Morgan Pomeroy, Lena Porte, Geraldine Rengiil, Nicolas Rocle, Randi Rotjan, Stuart Sandin, Annisah Sapul, Gilles Siu, Patrick Smallhorn-West, Jennifer Smith, Ada Sokach, Lucy Southworth, Blake Spady, Maya Srinivasan, Francis Staub, Karen Stone, Rick D. Stuart-Smith, Heather Summers, Helen Sykes, Aranteiti Tekiau, Erica K. Towle, Visesio Uluika, Schannel Van Dijken, Paino Vanai, Laurent Wantiez, Jane Waterhouse, David Welch, Jérémy Wicquart, Yvonne Wong, Supin Wongbusarakum, Ute Zischka.

Data & Code Accessibility

The GCRMN produces estimations regarding the status and trends of coral reefs using data acquired by the members of the GCRMN network. The data are collected following Data Sharing Agreements (DSA) with data contributors and as such the GCRMN is not the owner of datasets shared by its members. Therefore, for the “Status and Trends of Coral Reefs of the Pacific: 1980 – 2023” report, the GCRMN is unable to share the raw datasets. However, some members of the GCRMN network and report contributors have made their datasets publicly available. For benthic cover monitoring data, such open access datasets are listed here.

All code used to produce the results and figures presented in the “Status and Trends of Coral Reefs of the Pacific: 1980-2023” GCRMN report is openly available on a GitHub repository. This repository allows full reproducibility and transparency of the analyses.