More concern over the health of Australia’s coral reefs
Australia’s coral reefs are in trouble.
This past summer, the Great Barrier Reef experienced a widespread coral bleaching event for the sixth time since 2016.
Bleaching occurs when the water is too warm and corals become stressed, expelling the algae living symbiotically in their tissue, often turning them a stark white colour.
Major bleaching has also occurred in reefs down the coast of Western Australia and a severe heatwave has bleached corals on the iconic Ningaloo Reef.
Dr Scott Heron from James Cook University says successive bleaching events are unnatural and highly destructive.
“The whole concept of coral bleaching is not a normal situation on the scales that we’re seeing it. This isn’t a part of nature doing nature’s thing. Coral bleaching is a stress response for these organisms, these animals that live together to make up the coral reef and that stress response is principally on large scales due to hot temperatures.”
Dr Heron says researchers are reporting conditions that are, in some cases, catastrophic.
“Their reports have been really quite unsettling, what they have seen they’ve never seen before in those reefs.”
While many people may value the beauty of coral reefs and they draw millions of tourists every year around the world, Dr Heron says it’s also important to recognise the integral role they play in supporting ocean and human health.
“Coral reefs don’t just play a part in the beauty of nature. They are the nursery ground for about a quarter of the fish in the ocean. They are a storm protection for the coastlines where they exist. They are the day-to-day supermarket for a lot of people around the world.”
On Sunday, the world marked World Oceans Day, a day that celebrates the ocean and draws attention to its plight.
90 per cent of big fish populations have now been depleted and 50 per cent of corals have been destroyed, according to the United Nations.
Global events to protect the ocean surrounded World Oceans Day this year.
The Blue Economy and Finance Forum, which aims to bring financial solutions to ensure sustainable ocean industries was hosted in Monaco over the weekend.
Speaking at the forum, Prince William said the challenge to protect the world’s oceans is like nothing the world has faced before.
“Halfway through this decisive decade, I call on all of you to think big in your actions. Let us act together with urgency and optimism while we still have the chance for the future of our planet. For the future generations, we must listen to the words of Sir David Attenborough. If we save the sea, we save our world.”
Prince William also drew attention to a global push to protect 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030, a goal that has been endorsed by more than 190 countries.
Today, just 2.7 per cent of the ocean is effectively protected from harmful industrial activity.
The third United Nations Ocean Conference also begins this week in Nice.
Heads of state, policymakers, scientists and non-government organisations will gather to speak about climate change, pollution and making humanity’s use of marine resources more sustainable.
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a marine scientist from the University of Queensland, says global events like the UN conference are vital for securing the future of the oceans.
“I believe that we must have this collective action. It’s got to include not only multiple governments and so on but it should have entrepreneurs, business people and so on so that we can actually get this fixed at scale. Because scale is the killer — to change back what we’ve done over the last hundred years in the ocean is a very expensive proposition but it’s one that we must take.”
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg was one of 14 people awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia on this year’s King’s Birthday Honour List for his service to marine science.
He was at the forefront of the world’s research on coral bleaching in the 1990s.
Using scientific models, he discovered the world’s oceans would be too hot for corals to survive by mid-way through the 21st Century.
“That was a bit of a shocking sort of realisation I guess because you’re doing the study, I was sort of hoping that we would see that we would have centuries of time in which to fix the climate problem and thereby have a reefs persist in time but year, so what it told essentially was that by 2040, 2050, conditions will be hostile for corals on planet Earth.”
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg says it was sobering to realise these issues would impact the world in the short-term and he was called alarmist at the time by some other researchers.
“We changed the impression of the game as it stood — and that was that we were not getting hundreds of years of time in which to get these things fixed up, they were right on the doorstep within our lifetimes.”
This year’s U-N Oceans Conference says it aims to accelerate action and mobilise all actors to conserve and sustainably use the ocean.
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg says tackling climate change will be a key part of this process.
The ocean is a major sink for the world’s excess carbon and heat, absorbing over 90 per cent of excess heat and 30 per cent of human-induced carbon dioxide emissions.
According to NASA, about 90 per cent of global warming is occurring in the oceans.
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg says saving the oceans requires shifting rapidly away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable energy systems.
“The two have to occur together because you have to deal with emissions but you’ve also got to make sure you don’t kill coral reefs using a whole bunch of other problems like overfishing and nutrient pollution and unsustainable coastal development. If you do one but not the other then you fail.”
In spite of these immense challenges, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg says he maintains some hope for the future of coral reefs if humanity moves quickly and he says the emergence of new technologies can help to assist in the fight to save them.
“It’s an exciting time, it’s a time for hope, it’s a time for which we can’t give up and that’s one of the reasons I jump out of bed in the morning wanting to go and change the way things are.”
