Barrier Reef down but not out
A light-hearted ‘obituary’ for the world-famous ecosystem is premature, but has given nature lovers a fright.
Reports of the death of the Great Barrier Reef have been greatly exaggerated, scientists say, after the publication of an ‘‘obituary’’ for the vast coral ecosystem.
The famed network of reefs ‘‘passed away in 2016 after a long illness’’, wrote food and travel writer Rowan Jacobsen in an article for Outside magazine.
According to Jacobsen, the reef’s demise followed the ‘‘most catastrophic bleaching event in its history, from which it would never recover’’.
Despite the rather tongue-incheek nature of the obituary, various news outlets, including The Sun in Britain and the New York Post in the United States, as well as social media users, have rushed to mourn the supposed passing of the Great Barrier Reef.
The massive ecosystem off the east coast of Australia is the largest living entity on the planet.
But scientists have stressed that while the Great Barrier Reef, like most coral structures around the world, is under severe stress, it hasn’t quite snuffed it yet.
‘‘This is a fatalistic, doomsday approach to climate change that isn’t going to engage anyone and misinforms the public,’’ said Kim Cobb, a coral reef expert at Georgia Tech.
‘‘There will be reefs in 2050, including portions of the Great Barrier Reef. I’m pretty confident of that. I’m put off by pieces that say we are doomed.’’
A mass bleaching event, fuelled by warming oceans, has devastated corals around the world but has proved most visibly destructive on the Great Barrier Reef.
Almost a quarter of the reef’s coral has died off, with previously pristine areas in the north the worst affected.
Bleaching occurs when prolonged high water temperatures cause corals to expel their symbiotic algae, turning them into snow-white skeletons. Corals can recover from it, but some simply die.
Divers on the Great Barrier Reef
To say reefs are finished and we can’t do anything about it isn’t the message we need. Kim Cobb, coral reef expert
have spotted large areas with degraded coral, with some reporting the smell of rotting, dying coral when they emerge from the deep.
While almost all parts of the Great Barrier Reef have suffered bleaching, not all have died. Scientists hope that large parts will recover, although the long-term warming and acidifying of the oceans pose a grave threat to reefs around the world.
Research has shown that some corals may be able to adapt, but the pace of the warming means that genetic engineering may be required to repopulate reefs, which are critical for thousands of marine species and a drawcard for millions of tourists.
Russell Brainard, head of the coral reef ecosystem programme at the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Centre in Hawaii, said some people ‘‘are going to take it at face value that the Great Barrier Reef is dead’’.
Cobb added: ‘‘I have studied corals off Christmas Island in the Pacific, where 85 per cent of them have died – it was a graveyard. But even there, I was shocked to see remarkable resilience. Amid the graveyards of the reefs there were areas that looked like nothing had happened.
‘‘There is a lot we can do to minimise climate change, and we need to get going on that. To say reefs are finished and we can’t do anything about it isn’t the message we need going forward.’’