Tourists, Reef Guides Facing Up To Undeniable Reality After Five Mass GBR Bleachings In Eight Years

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The reef has experienced mass bleaching in 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and now again in 2024. But for an ecosystem the size of Italy, the effects are not uniform. In any given year, some reefs escape the heat stress, some turn white but then regain their colour, while some corals will die. Bleaching can make corals more susceptible to disease, slow their growth and impede their reproduction. Government scientists were this week carrying out in-water and aerial surveys to assess the bleaching across the whole reef, but it could be weeks, or even months, before there’s a clear picture of how severe this year has been. The long-term prognosis for the reef is not good. As global heating continues, the chances of ever more intense heat stress events is rising.

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Yolanda Waters is founder of advocacy group Divers for Climate and has been diving in the southern section of the reef in recent weeks. "It was bleached coral as far as the eye could see,” she says. “I didn’t want to get back into the water. It’s a restorative place for me and to not want to go back in is awful.”

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Tahn Miller has been working as a dive instructor and guide at Wavelength Reef Cruises in Port Douglas in far north Queensland for 15 years. Miller remembers hearing stories from a decade ago of how some dive guides in other parts of the reef would be told not to mention climate change to guests for fear of perpetuating ideas the natural treasure was either dying or not worth visiting.

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“You have climate sceptics in every group, but I find that’s becoming less and less,” he says. “I tell them I’m not there to change anyone’s minds, but this is what I have witnessed. I try and be honest with them.” Miller says after the 2016 bleaching, he saw reefs recovering. But his optimism has been eroded in recent years. There are several tour operators that are also running small reef restoration projections in the areas they visit, including replanting corals. “Some of the corals I’ve planted – hundreds of them – have already died [this summer],” he says. “The time is now … we have to make change because if we don’t, we lose massive expanses of reef.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/23/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-tourism-impact