barbarathomson

By barbarathomson

Bleached Exit

I had thought I was informed about the state of the Reef but nothing had prepared me for the devastation that once was the greatest, richest, most varied, most colourful masterpiece of all the world’s oceans. After 4 sets of sustained global sea-temperature rise, multiple cyclone damage and further outbreaks of Crown of Thorns Starfish, 70% of the coral is dead.
What this looks like is mile after mile of grey dirty concrete rubble with the occasional live boulder coral each surrounded by a small desperate shoal of fish. No stags-horn or lace corals survive. We visited 3 sites on the outer Opal reef that a few years ago had been of outstanding beauty. All were empty as ruined cities. After the third site I was beyond tears, and it was a subdued boat load of people who listened to Paul, a Systems Ecologist spelling out the human causes of destruction that all of us in the developed world seem locked into, and the inevitable future of such hammering. The threat of being struck off the World Heritage List  and loss of the multi-million pound tourist trade will be the least of the worries.
Our planet is also a closed system.

In the Wavelength picture this angel fish swims above coral that is all dead or dying except for the small piece on the left. The link below spells out the researched reality. 
https://www.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring/gbr-condition-summary-2017-2018

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