Healthy Great Barrier Reef, healthy environmental scandal

That means the 10 per cent minimum cover around 2012 may actually have been 20 per cent. At that time the narrative was that the reef had virtually vanished, a thriving tour boat industry to the contrary. Our snorkeller would have felt pressure to come up with a low figure – that might explain it.

In the last few years Peter Ridd and Jennifer Marohasy, under various IPA programs, have been fact-checking claims of reef degradation through direct observations and mini-documentaries like ‘Finding Porites’. Now when you’re towed over the reef the existence of auditors might be running around in the back of your mind, and there would be pressure to over-estimate cover. So the 37 per cent cover estimated now might be only 27 per cent.

This would mean a much more static and less dynamic reef, but again that is good news because it would mean that for 36 years the reef has maintained itself, contrary to the current narrative, and without our help.

We’ll never know how subjective the measures are because AIMS does not even attempt to take a photographic survey of the reef, despite this being world’s best practice. In Japan, they have used a towed optical camera array system that photographs the reef and can generate a 3D structure models with a resolution down to 10 centimetres. They can use AI on to generate replicable figures for cover. Their system is also 47 times as productive as our intern, scanning 7000 sqm/hr to her 150.

Accuracy and replicability do not appear to be things that overly concern AIMS. Marohasy reports on her blog that between March 6-22, two different groups from AIMS observed the John Brewer reef. The first group didn’t observe any bleaching, but claimed only 21.8 per cent coral cover – they were in the water – and the second group significant bleaching between 30-60 per cent – they were flying over at 150 metres. Marohasy filmed the reef for her latest documentary between April 10-12. She found some bleaching and abundant reef cover – over 100 per cent in some places.

What is the right amount of coral cover? That is a very good question, for which there appears to be no definitive answer. It depends. For example, some reefs have corals all over their crests, while others that are exposed at low tide, having survived from the time a few thousand years earlier when sea levels were higher, only have coral on their perimeter.

So the extortion gig is up, but there are some things the Treasurer could fruitfully redirect just a few dollars to.

They say that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Measurement of the reef is a mess. He needs to let an international tender for someone to take this job over from AIMS. Marohasy’s experience at John Brewer suggests that not only are they incompetent, but they may be negligent – the reef was either bleached, or it wasn’t. They can’t record it in both states like some sort of marine Schrodinger’s cat.

Apart from water surveys, coring large corals like the Porites to track coral growth, and establishing fixed survey areas on selected reefs, also provide valuable, high-resolution insights into coral health.

It’s also an opportunity to modernise scientific research.

We know that over 50 per cent of published scientific studies are wrong. This might not matter much when ARC grants are based on them, but it sure as hell does when serious public money is spent on the spurious. Just as we have an auditor-general to check general government expenditure there needs to be a science-auditor to check government science.

Checks and balances are obviously missing in this area, and they have allowed systemic fraud to take place.

Finally, not only should the government oppose the listing of the Great Barrier Reef by Unesco as endangered, but we should be pushing for its recognition as one of the continuing and greatest success stories of nature.

The only thing endangered about the reef ought to be the ideological ‘terrorists’ masquerading as scientists who held it hostage for so long.