Women of the reef: meet four women who call the iconic Great Barrier Reef home
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest, most spectacular living structure on earth and one of its seven natural wonders. Samantha Trenoweth meets four women for whom the reef is more than an Australian icon – it’s home.
Dr Jodie Rummer Scientist
Jodie Rummer was born far from the ocean, in Illinois in the US, but she learnt to swim soon after she could walk and, at six, she was given a mask and snorkel. “That was my first glimpse of maybe being a fish,” she says, laughing.
Jodie spent long mid-western summers submerged in pools and lakes and, during the school term, she was a “science geek – obsessed with nature documentaries, National Geographic
Explorer and Jacques Cousteau”. At university, she enrolled in a field course in Jamaica and the study of coral reef fish became her life’s work. When she heard that the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University was looking for a marine physiologist, she had her CV in the mail before you could say “Nemo”.
The 39-year-old scientist says that her first glimpse of the reef “… was like seeing the Holy Grail. It was like, ‘Here I am and this is what I’ve been working towards my whole life.’ I was wide-eyed, awestruck. I felt like a kid.”
So it was heartbreaking to witness the historic bleaching event this year.
“I was there in February and March,” she says. “We started to get daytime low tides and the water became warmer. On February 20, the dive computers on our wrists gave spot readings of 34°C. That was insanely warm for these reefs – even 31° C is very warm. We thought, ‘Wow, this isn’t going to be good, bleaching will start now.’
“The water became murky – death was in the water. The corals began fluorescing and then they turned white. It became a seascape of bleached white coral. I’ve never seen destruction like that in my life.”
The high temperatures were caused by an El Niño weather pattern, compounded by global warming, and the result was the most severe bleaching since records began. Yet even after an event like that, Jodie maintains that the reef can be saved.
“It depends on what we’re willing to accept. Are we willing to accept this is the new normal? I’m not,” she insists. “The elephant in the room is climate change. We need to reduce carbon emissions. I don’t think we say it’s over. I don’t think we just let it burn.”