ESA’s Sentinel-2A over the Great Barrier Reef
The Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over part of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s northeast coast on 1 April 2017. Extending more than 2000 km and covering an area of some 350 000 sq km, it is the planet’s biggest single structure made by living organisms, called coral polyps. Coral reefs worldwide are increasingly under threat from coral bleaching. This happens when algae living in the corals’ tissues, which capture the Sun’s energy and are essential to coral survival, are expelled owing to high water temperatures. The corals of the Great Barrier Reef have now suffered two bleaching events in successive years.
Copyright contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The sixth International Ocean Colour Science (IOCS) meeting will take place in Darmstadt, Germany from 1 – 4 December 2025, hosted by EUMETSAT and ESA with support from other agencies.