Rescue strategy for Reef

Experts look for solutions

More than 300 local and international delegates have gathered in Cairns to address the challenges threatening reef survival around the world as a mass bleaching event unfolds on the Great Barrier Reef.

The Reef Resilience Symposium 2024 will allow global reef experts to share innovative new solutions to protect and restore the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs around the world through presentations, workshops and panel discussions.

The event will unite reef stewards, managers, researchers, engineers, traditional owners, and tourism industry leaders to share knowledge and identify priority actions to boost the resilience coral reefs.

“This conference is really important because it brings together all the different researchers who hold all the different pieces to the puzzle which we can put together to help map the way forward,” said Reef and Rainforest Research Centre managing director Sheriden Morris.

Key talking points will be advances in reef restoration science, innovation in the control of crown of thorns starfish – a destructive invasive species – First Nations conservation practices, and how tourism and local stewards can take action.

The event will also see more of than 450 delegates tuning in from across the globe online able to participate in sessions virtually.

Dr David Wachenfeld is the research program director of the Reef Ecology and Monitoring Program at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

He said this conference was particularly important.

“As we see coral bleaching and other impacts of climate change growing both here at home and internationally around the globe we know two things are essential, the strongest possible action to reduce greenhouse emissions, but equally the science to underpin better protection of our reefs and to underpin the research and development to build the next generation of tools to protect our reefs,” he said.

The symposium comes as the Reef experiences its fifth mass bleaching event in only eight years.

“This is one of the most extensive and severe bleaching events to hit our Great Barrier Reef,” said Australian Marine Conservation Society campaign manager Dr Lissa Schindler.

“For the first time, extreme bleaching – where more than 90 per cent of a reef’s coral cover is bleached – has been observed in all three regions of the Great Barrier Reef,” Dr Schindler said.