Corals of Cocos (Keeling) Islands

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands is an Australian external territory that lies in the Indian Ocean around 2,770 kilometres north-west of Perth.

This remote island group consists of two coral atolls made up of 27 islands, only two of which are inhabited. The surrounding living coral reefs host a huge variety of marine life, including around 99 species of beautiful and delicate hard and soft corals, some of which have not been recorded elsewhere in the eastern Indian ocean.

This issue features intricate details of corals at locations including those known as the Rose Wall, the Cabbage Patch and the Garden of Eden. They include tree coral, plate coral, brain coral and others. 

Like all the world’s fragile coral reefs, those on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands are significantly threatened by global warming and rising sea levels. The Earth has warmed by an average of 1.2°C since pre-industrial times, and in the last 40 years we have lost 50 per cent of our coral reefs. If the average global temperature rises by 1.5°C, the loss will be somewhere between 70 and 90 per cent.  In a world with 2°C of warming, only 1 per cent of our coral reefs will remain. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2024 was the warmest on record.