The Great Great Barrier Reef Swindle

A few millennia later, Aboriginal people were to witness the greatest loss of coral ever seen by humans in Australia, for about 5,000 years ago, whilet civilisations were being born around the world, the sea level of eastern Australia started to fall. The coral reefs that had grown rapidly upwards to the low tide level were now exposed to the air and sun during spring tides. They died and formed the extensive dead areas called reef flat that make up a large proportion of many reefs in the GBR. It is ironic that if we see a modest sea level rise of one metre due to global warming, these dead areas of reef will explode into life, potentially doubling the coral cover. Sea level rise will be bad for Bangladesh and Venice but it will be good for the GBR.

Other threats are also overstated. Studies have shown that the quantity of sediment in rivers’ plumes that wash out into the lagoons is much less than sediment that is resuspended from the seabed every time the south-easterly trade winds blow. Pollution due to nutrients is also probably restricted to a few reefs close to a couple of river mouths as the rest of the lagoon receives relatively small nutrient loads from rivers compared to other sources, and the water is rapidly flushed to the Coral Sea.

Fishing pressure is very limited. The coast adjacent to the GBR contains about half a million people compared with 50 million for the similarly sized Caribbean reefs. Most Queenslanders never visit the reef and do not use it as a significant food source unlike most other reefs around the world. The northern 1,000 kilometres of the reef has a population that can be counted in 100’s. It has been barely touched by mankind.

With the exception of Antarctica, I challenge anyone to name an ecosystem better preserved than the GBR. The sheer lack of people pressure on this huge system, and its distance from the coast has saved the GBR from the fate that has befallen the Caribbean and other areas. It did not suffer the equivalent of land clearing for agriculture, cities, dams and roads. It does not have problems with infestations of noxious weeds and feral animals such as cats and cane toads, or the mass species extinctions of the Australian land.

Apart from a reduction in turtles and dugongs, it is doubtful that Captain Cook would notice any difference to the GBR if he sailed up this coast again. Pity we cannot say the same about the land that he visited. Whereas the coral reef that he struck near Cooktown is alive and healthy, the land around Botany Bay would be unrecognisable.

So why have we been swindled into believing this almost pristine system is just about to roll over and die when it shows so few signs of stress. There are many reasons and processes that have caused this and some of them are the same as why we should all be more than a little sceptical about the hypothesis that CO2 is causing global warming.

The first reason is that there is some very bad science around. Second, a mainly biological oriented scientific community seems to take little heed of the geological history of corals. Third, we have many organisations and scientists that rely for funding on there being a problem with the GBR. Most grant applications on the GBR will mention at some stage that a motivation for the work is the threat to which it is exposed. I confess that I do this in all my applications - it’s the way the game works.

Why does a scientist and environmentalist such as myself worry about a little exaggeration about the reef. Surely it’s better to be safe than sorry. To a certain extent it is, however, the scientist in me worries about the credibility of science and scientists. We cannot afford to cry wolf too often or our credibility will fall to that of used car salesmen and estate agents - if it is not there already. The environmentalist in me worries about the misdirection of scarce resources if we concentrate on “saving” a system such as the GBR. Better we concentrate on weeds and overpopulation and other genuine problems.

So I’m thinking of asking Martin Durkin to come over to Australia and do another show called The Great Great Barrier Reef Swindle. I’d have to make sure he got all his graphs right and did not talk to anybody who thought smoking didn’t cause cancer, but I reckon he could put a very compelling case that the GBR is in great shape and that there is little to fear, especially relative to other environmental issues, such as overpopulation and invasive species.