The 1997-1998 Mass Bleaching Event Around the World

Abstract

There has been significant bleaching of hard and soft corals in widely separate parts of the world from mid-1997 to the last months of 1998. Much of this bleaching coincided with a large El Nino event, immediately switching over to a strong La Nina. Some of the reports by experienced observers are of unprecedented bleaching in places as widespread as (from west to east) the Middle East, East Africa, the Indian Ocean, South, Southeast and East Asia, far West and far East Pacific, the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean.