05-04-2016 07:00

The Great Barrier Reef is 1,931 kilometres long. It is in Australia. It is the biggest living ecosystem. It is in danger.

This year is very hot. The water is getting hot, too. This is not good for the coral. The coral dies when the water is too hot. The coral turns white. There is no life in it. It is just rock. This is called “bleaching”.

People fly from Australia to Papua New Guinea. They film 500 coral reefs. 95% of them are white and yellow.

Difficult words: reef (a line of coral, rock or sand in the water), ecosystem (a group of living things), coral (a large plant that lives in the ocean).

You can read the original story and watch the video in the Level 3 section.