Reef warning
Coral reefs will be dead by 2100 because of human ‘‘maltreatment of the oceans’’, David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II TV documentary has declared.
AUSTRALIA: Coral reefs – including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – will be dead by 2100 because of human ‘‘maltreatment of the oceans’’, David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II television documentary has declared.
Attenborough’s follow-up series, which took four years to produce, finished airing in Britain yesterday. It ended with his grim warning about the state of our oceans, which he said were ‘‘under threat now as never before’’.
He said climate change, plastic pollution and over-fishing were all contributing to the demise of coral reefs.
Blue Planet II has been Britain’s most-watched show of 2017, with 14 million people tuning into the first episode.
A major section of the programme is devoted to the Great Barrier Reef, where filming began in 2016 on Lizard Island.
The programme charted the Great Barrier Reef’s worst bleaching event, caused by a combination of a warming ocean and an El Nino, which turned healthy corals into white rubble.
The following summer brought another big bleaching event, centred more to the south, leaving about half the reef affected during the two bouts.
Attenborough said more than two-thirds of the world’s coral reefs had suffered from rises in ocean temperatures over the last three years.
‘‘Coral reefs could be gone by the end of this century,’’ Chris Langdon, professor of Marine Biology and Ecology at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, told Attenborough.
‘‘And the cause of this? Carbon dioxide. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more acidic the ocean becomes,’’ said Attenborough, raising the twin threat – acidification, along with warmer oceans – that is being triggered by changing the chemistry of the atmosphere.
‘‘Evidence points to the burning of fossil fuels as the primary cause for these increasing levels of carbon dioxide.
‘‘And this is man-made beyond question?’’ Attenborough asked Langdon.
‘‘Beyond question,’’ replied Langdon. But he said the death of the reefs could be averted by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like solar and wind.
Australia’s coalition government, under both Malcolm Turnbull and his predecessor Tony Abbott, have launched ideological attacks on the former Labor government’s marine parks plan and renewable energy target.
It has scaled back the 2020 renewable energy target and is preparing to reduce the area of Australia’s marine parks by almost half. Some 1200 scientists have called on the government to reconsider, saying the cuts to the parks are a ‘‘retrograde step.’’
Attenborough said the creation of more marine parks, which currently cover just 1 per cent of the ocean, were ‘‘vital’’ to protecting reefs from dying.
Yet despite the dire scenes depicted in his documentary, Attenborough remained hopeful.
‘‘We can turn things around, we’ve done so once before.’’
Attenborough cited the 1986 agreement to end commercial whaling, which he said had been instrumental in the recovery of whale species, despite some countries – such as Japan – continuing to hunt the creatures.
– Fairfax