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The Great Barrier Reef will be so degraded by warming waters that it will be unrecognisable within 20 years, an eminent marine scientist has said.

Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told The Times: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.”

Once carbon dioxide had hit the levels predicted for between 2030 and 2060, all coral reefs were doomed to extinction, he said.

“They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organisation. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”

Click here to read the full article in The Times.

Will corals die? Or will they evolve?

But as our coral reefs die, some scientists are monitoring their decline at the genomic level, in anticipation of evolutionary developments that may be a sign of better news.

"Corals have a substantial potential to evolve, and this is the high time for them to do it," said biologist Mikhail Matz, assistant professor of integrative biology at The University of Texas at Austin and an expert on coral DNA. 

"The old corals are dying, yes, but that's a part of evolving. This may be horrible news, or this can be good news, all depending on how the next generation of corals turns out," Matz said. "Once we know how corals evolve, we might be able to help them in this, or at least avoid standing in evolution's way...I want to watch them very closely as it happens to see how evolution works."

Click here to read more about evolving coral at Live Science.