BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL

Debate continues to rage over whether the Great Barrier Reef is dying. David Levell investigates what’s really happening to Australia’s world-renowned marine park

- David Levell

IN RECENT YEARS THE WORLD RANG WITH SHOCK REPORTS that mass coral bleaching was devastating Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the largest and most famous of all coral ecosystems. Some despairing commentators pronounced the reef as almost or already dead, thanks to global warming. One media outlet even published its "obituary."

At the other extreme, sceptics of man-made climate change dismissed the bleaching as either exaggerated or part of a natural cycle—or both. Adding to the confusion, many refutations of the GBR’s “death” gave the impression that it is not in serious trouble. So who do we believe?

“Both are very far from the truth,” says David Wachenfeld, director of reef recovery at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. “It’s not dead, and it’s not fine. It’s under extreme threat, parts of it are highly damaged, and it needs us to do more than we’re doing now. Collectively. Globally.”

One easily overlooked difficulty with discussing the GBR is its sheer size. Observations of one part twist easily into misleading conclusions about the whole. “The Great Barrier Reef is absolutely enormous,” says Wachenfeld. “I don’t think many people can understand something at that scale. They think of it as a single tourism destination like they might think of the Eiffel Tower. But so far— and I’m crossing my fingers here—no cyclone, bleaching event or anything else has caused severe impact over the whole Barrier Reef.”