Egypt: Coral Reefs in Red Sea unaffected by rising temperatures, bleaching

CAIRO – 7 September 2025: Egypt’s Ministry of Environment has launched its annual coral reef monitoring program across several sites in the Northern Islands Protected Area in the Red Sea, confirming that the coral reefs have not been affected by rising sea temperatures and bleaching, unlike in previous years (2023 and 2024).

Minister of Local Development and Acting Minister of Environment, Manal Awad, stated that most coral reefs in the northern Red Sea islands have recovered from previous bleaching episodes. She attributed this recovery to a shorter duration of elevated sea surface temperatures compared to the past two years.

The monitoring program was carried out by the Red Sea Protected Areas Scientific Team.

Minister Awad noted that the recovered reefs have demonstrated strong resilience to extreme weather events and the broader impacts of climate change.

She explained that the Coral Reef Monitoring Program is an annual initiative conducted by the Ministry of Environment, with contributions from experts in the Red Sea and South Sinai nature reserves and in collaboration with Egyptian university researchers specializing in coral reef ecosystems. The program uses standardized scientific methods to assess reef health and identify external stressors, as coral reefs globally face increasing threats from rising sea temperatures due to climate change.

Despite global trends of widespread coral bleaching, coral reefs in Egypt’s northern Red Sea have shown remarkable resistance. According to Dr. Eslam Osman, Lecturer of Marine Ecology at the Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University, the reefs can withstand increases in sea surface temperatures of up to 6°C during the summer months.

In an interview with Egypt Today on March 3, 2019, Dr. Osman emphasized: “No coral bleaching has been recorded in the northern Red Sea over the past three decades, which indicates that the coral reefs in this region are significantly less sensitive to high temperatures.”

His 2017 study, published in Global Change Biology, examined coral bleaching refugia in the northern Red Sea. The research was conducted in collaboration with coral reef ecologists from Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and Australia.