A recovery in the number of corals growing on the Great Barrier Reef over recent years has paused, with government scientists blaming bleaching, disease and attacks by starfish.

Results from the latest annual surveys of more than 100 individual reefs show a small drop in coral cover over the northern and central parts of the reef over the past year. The report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) details the results of in-water surveys of 111 reefs carried out between August 2022 and May this year.The surveys came after the summer of 2022 which saw the first mass coral bleaching on record to occur during a La Niña – a climate pattern that usually brings cooler conditions.

The report said: “The effects from the 2022 bleaching event, the fourth in seven years, caused some coral loss on some reefs. It is likely that those corals which survived bleaching have been affected by reduced growth and reproduction.”

Last year’s report said three years of relatively benign conditions produced record levels of coral cover in the reef’s northern and central areas.

Dr Mike Emslie, who leads the long-term reef monitoring program at Aims, said there was an expectation the reef would have continued to recover, but the data showed otherwise. “This demonstrates that even less-severe bleaching events are enough to cause a pause in coral cover,” he said. He said the recovery in recent years was “definitely a good news story”, but this “could turn around very quickly with another mass bleaching event, and there’s still the risk from crown-of-thorns starfish and coral disease”.

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