Obviously you already know that the Great Barrier Reef is amazing. So amazing in fact that it’s considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world. And yet, we can’t stop killing it. According to the New York Times, enormous chunks of the Great Barrier Reef are officially dead and despite scientist’s warnings for the last two decades, we continue to murder one of the Earth’s most beautiful treasures.
But it’s not just pretty pictures that are at stake.
If most of the world’s coral reefs die, as scientists fear is increasingly likely, some of the richest and most colorful life in the ocean could be lost, along with huge sums from reef tourism. In poorer countries, lives are at stake: Hundreds of millions of people get their protein primarily from reef fish, and the loss of that food supply could become a humanitarian crisis.
Climate change and an increase in global water temperatures have caused widespread coral bleaching . So much so that when Terry P. Hughes (director of a government-funded center for coral reef studies at James Cook University and the lead author of a paper on the reef that is being published Thursday in the journal Nature) and his students viewed maps surveying the extensive patches of dead reef that were unlikely to recover, they cried. According to the New York Times, Hughes’ “aerial surveys, combined with underwater measurements, found that 67 percent of the corals had died in a long stretch north of Port Douglas, and in patches, the mortality reached 83 percent.”
Making matters worse are handful of important issues including the vulnerability of the Paris Agreement now that Donald Trump is in office, the Australian government’s continued support of fossil fuel development, and a proposed coal mine built inland of the reef. And while some coral species, like many other creatures, might be able to survive increasing water temperatures by migrating toward Earth’s poles, ecological changes are occurring so quickly, it’s difficult to say if coral would be able to keep pace.
Though there is some hope based on a reefs’ ability to recover in moderate temperatures, that hope is dwindling because global mass bleaching events are growing more frequent and the more regular they become, the less likely it is that a reef will recover. There is just no sugar coating the devastation that our stupid way of life is having on Earth.
(Via New York Times)
