Great Barrier Reef paints mural of life and death
Lizard Island snorkelling trip lifts veil on coral and colour in region struck by bleaching
LIZARD ISLAND, AUSTRALIA— Bleurghbla-spla-thwa.
Sputtering. Excited and tense, I’ve sucked sea water into my snorkel.
Three grey silhouettes are rising to investigate clicks from the camera of Lizard Island videographer Trent Reid. Sharks. The boat is hundreds of metres away. I have the exact height, weight and wingspan of Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps (really) and none of his ability, muscle tone or even one fully functioning shoulder (also, really).
I’m a fish out of water. In the water. With three sharks.
The three fins circle, narrowing their arc every pass. Something bumps my ribs. Melodramatically, I accept this is it. I’m lunch. The universe loves irony and my favourite movie is Jaws. I’m a goner. But it’s only Reid, tapping my side, beckoning me to stop drifting off the reef.
“Stay this side,” he says, surfacing. “It’s not dangerous, but they are stalking us.”
His relaxed Aussie twang does not make this any more reassuring. He explains the sharks’ instinct is to lure us to deep water, where their advantage is strongest. Awesome.
I’ve come to Lizard Island, the most northern resort on the Great Barrier Reef’s 900 islands and the epicentre of lifeless coral, if the media reports in 2016 indicting climate change for the bleaching and death of the reef are accurate.
For Lizard Island general manager Emilio Fortini, a suave, oliveskinned Italian-Australian, those stories are somewhat of a problem. He’s fronting calls from concerned guests, asking if there’s any point coming to see the reef anymore.
To counter the hysteria, Lizard plans to start offering four-night all inclusive “dead zone” tours from September this year. The trips, costing about $5,500 and bookable via the resort website lizardisland.com.au, will be hosted by an Australian Museum scientist and members of the Lizard Island Research Station. They aim to furnish tourists with facts and show them the reality of reef sections mistakenly declared entirely “dead.”
There’s no doubt the reef’s state is perilous. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) says 2016 has seen the worst bleaching on record. Scientists at Lizard Island’s research centre called it the worst bleaching since 2002.
Seeing is believing, so I fly to the $1,500-a-night (minimum) luxury retreat on Lizard Island to find out.
No one sleeps or reads on the plane. Glowing turquoise reefs speckle the placid blue ocean below. It’s nuclear nature. Within two hours of landing, I’m hitting the water. No experience is necessary. The reef is so shallow, snorkelling is just as good as diving. I don a full-body stinger suit for protection from the tiny Irukandji jelly- fish and the sun. The latter is far more important for my Scottish skin. I’m so pasty white, I’m half expecting Moby-Dick’s Capt. Ahab to appear on the horizon and start lobbing spears my way. The suits help the environment, too, by preventing excess globs of chemical-laden sunscreen from damaging the reef.
I fall backward off a boat into water and the reef divulges colours and vitality kept secret above the surface. Spiky bursting-yellow “stag horn” coral pierce retinas. Shattering blue dots cover giant clams. Rays of sunlight scintillate the aqua water.
I’ve seen Grand Canyon reds. White Himalayas. New Zealand greens. Swimming the Great Barrier Reef is like seeing my first rainbow.
Delicate orange “brain” and wafting blue “spaghetti” coral conceal yellow Maori wrasse, clownfish and blue tangs. Parrotfish chip dusty lumps of coral, one colour palette eating another.
Swaying schools of fish emerge and disappear at will. A flapping spotted eagle ray trawls the depths. How can all this be here? I’ve stood in megacities and felt small, humble. One flimsy cardboard piece of a puzzle. This is different. I’m a micro-pixel on a movie screen.
The wider breadth of marine life, the extra freedom and time to explore, and the substantially smaller groups of around eight people set Lizard’s reef tours apart from the much cheaper (less than $200) 40person day trips departing from the mainland. Reid takes us to a stretch of reef remote enough to be named No Name Reef.
It’s snorkelling heaven, if you can afford to enter the pearly gates.
Speaking of heaven, death is close at hand, and I don’t mean the sharks stalking me. Live and dead coral are neighbours. The damage is sporadic, like a hurricane hitting a city. Some homes are destroyed while others are left intact. Some coral are colourful while their neighbours are bleached, the algae evicted when the water temperature increases and the coral turn a mouldy white.
Sometimes blandness is necessary to accentuate the beautiful. Not so here.
The dead coral doesn’t complement or heighten the reef’s esthetic. My ecstasy, seeing this wonder of the natural world, is tapered by the feeling I’m telling a dear relative on their deathbed I love them, soaking in the last few moments in their company while I still can. I barely know the reef and I’ve got that solemn realization of loss that hits weeks after a funeral.
The Australian Museum says the reef has lost half its coral since 1980. Last year’s depletion, exacerbated by the warm El Nino weather system, was no sudden phenomenon and warming water temperature is not the only thing destroying the reef. Unchecked, the polyp predator crown-of-thorns starfish can devastate swathes of coral. Cyclones have crippled parts of the reef around Lizard, especially the lagoon, where the coral are not ordinarily subject to rough conditions.
Contrary to some 2016 headlines, the reef is still alive and coral can recover, but this is the first environment I’m seeing that makes me realize it might not be around for my future kids. No one can be sure if it has10,100 or1,000 years left. We’re in unchartered territory.
When I see the three sharks circling Reid and me, I start to think maybe I’ll go before the reef. Sharks don’t swim, they swagger like UFC champion Conor McGregor’s “billionaire strut.” Until we move. They don’t need a Steven Spielberg movie to fear us. One swift movement and they flee.
The first glimpse of their fins makes me intensely vulnerable. I swallow seawater, excited and tense. Bleurgh-bla-spla-thwa. When another shark appears, a smaller blacktip shark, I follow him, unafraid. His black-tipped fin stands out against the bright reef.
He swaggers away to the deep blue murk. And he’s gone. Faded to nothing. David Bateman was hosted by Lizard Island resort, which did not review or approve this story.