Egypt’s Red Sea corals bleached despite resilience

Mahmoud Hanafy, a marine biologist at Suez Canal University, led a survey showing that corals throughout Egypt’s Red Sea experienced bleaching in 2024.

For years, these corals were considered unusually resistant to warming waters, leading some scientists to predict they could become the last remaining coral reefs globally. However, heat waves in 2023 and 2024 caused bleaching across the Red Sea, affecting up to half of the corals in southern areas.

Scientists are investigating what previously protected these “super corals.” Eslam Osman, a marine ecologist at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, believes the corals’ evolutionary history, specifically, surviving passage through warm waters at the Bab al-Mandab Straight between Djibouti and Yemen, gave them heat tolerance. Hanafy instead emphasises water circulation patterns in the northern Red Sea, which bring cooler water to the surface and buffer the corals.

The 2024 bleaching event coincided with unusually calm seas and low tides, weakening the protective water circulation. While the exact cause of the resilience remains debated, preliminary estimates suggest recovery rates of 75 to 88 percent a year after the bleaching, a stronger rebound than observed in other regions. The Egyptian government is working with international partners to increase conservation efforts, but scientists agree that reducing carbon emissions remains the most crucial step for long-term survival.