The Great Barrier Reef

Australia’s coral reefs are national icons, and the Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s most famous scuba diving destinations, attracting around two million visitors each year.

It’s the world’s largest living organism, is a World Heritage-listed preservation area, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest natural wonders of the world — yet the entire reef is under threat from global warming.

Rising sea temperatures put stress on the corals and cause them to shed the algae that lives in their outer tissues — this leeches away their amazing colours and leaves them unable to support other marine life.

At the moment, the Great Barrier Reef represents the world’s largest coral reef system, made up of more than 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands, stretching for more than 3,000 kilometres. The vast biodiversity, warm clear waters and accessibility of the Great Barrier Reef make it a hugely popular diving destination. Divers can look out for up to 30 species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises; six species of sea turtles; around 125 species of shark, stingray, skates and chimera; plus heaps of smaller creatures such as fish, seahorses, sea snakes, and molluscs. Many of them are vulnerable or endangered species.

But this underwater environment will be far less appealing to tourists if it loses its vibrant colour, and can no longer support a vast range of sea creatures. Instead, divers could be faced with an eerie, white, coral skeleton — almost entirely devoid of marine life.

But how likely is this to happen? Unfortunately, with sea temperatures already rising, mass coral bleaching events have already occurred in the summers of 1998, 2002 and 2006, and are expected to become an annual event. Experts say the corals have a very low tolerance to shifts in temperature, with just one or two degrees potentially causing irreversible damage. So, unless the corals can adapt and become acclimatised, their long-term future looks shaky.

Apart from the reef’s environmental value, and its aesthetic value as one of Australia’s national icons, it also has great economic value. Tourism on the Great Barrier Reef alone generates around 5 billion dollars each year, so any threats to the reef also pose threats to Australia’s economy.

Great Barrier Reef Tourism

And while a large area of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which works to limit the impact of human activities such as tourism and fishing, the organisation has little power to slow the wider process of global warming.

It is, of course, not the only tourist destination to be hit by climate change. In fact some travellers, so-called ‘climate tourists’, are drawing up lists of destinations on the ‘endangered’ list which they plan to visit before climate change takes its toll. The Great Barrier Reef is often one of them – and with some experts saying it could be “functionally extinct” by 2030, now’s the time to see it before it loses its allure.