Viewed from the boat, the mighty elkhorn corals shimmer through the clear water, their tips grazing the surface and seeming ...

This story appears in the October 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine. In the mangroves off the east coast of Central America, at the edge of the Mesoamerican Reef, the world is divided in ...

Q: Were you scared to be in the path of a 30-foot whale shark? A: Fear is a good thing when working with wild animals. Whale sharks aren’t harmful to people. The worst thing is you might get bum ...

The 2024 Reef Report Card continues to show coral reef devastation, but the most recent report, which could incentivize action to protect them, offers some hope. According to Mongabay, the latest ...

Between January 2023 and April 2025, heat stress impacted 84% of coral reefs worldwide, from the Mesoamerican Reef in the Caribbean to so-called supercorals in the Red Sea, an area previously ...

The Mesoamerican reef is the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere. A local community in Mexico has come up with an innovative way to protect it from hurricanes and climate change ...

Established to protect and preserve the delicate ecosystems found beneath the waves, the park spans an impressive area along the Mesoamerican Reef, the second-largest barrier reef system in the world.