Cyclone Debbie damages non-bleached area of Great Barrier Reef...
Cyclone Strikes Healthiest Part of Great Barrier Reef
April 09, 2017 — A cyclone that left a trail of destruction in northeast Australia and New Zealand has also damaged one of the few healthy sections of the Great Barrier Reef to have escaped large-scale bleaching, scientists said on Monday.
The natural devastation adds to the human and economic toll of Cyclone Debbie, which killed at least six people in recent weeks and severed rail transport lines in one of the world's biggest coal precincts. The damage caused when the intense, slow-moving cyclone system struck a healthier section of the reef outweighed any potential beneficial cooling effect, scientists from the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies said. “Any cooling effects related to the cyclone are likely to be negligible in relation to the damage it caused, which unfortunately struck a section of the reef that had largely escaped the worst of the bleaching," ARC said in a statement.
Australian senator Pauline Hanson listens to marine scientist Alison Jones, left, as she displays a piece of coral on the Great Barrier Reef. Australian scientists say warming oceans have caused the biggest die-off of corals ever recorded on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
The World Heritage site has suffered a second bleaching event in 12 months, triggered by unseasonably warm waters, ARC added. Higher temperatures force coral to expel living algae and turn white as it calcifies. Mildly bleached coral can recover if the temperature drops, and an ARC survey found this happened in southern parts of the reef, where coral mortality was much lower, though scientists said much of the Great Barrier Reef was unlikely to recover. “It takes at least a decade for a full recovery of even the fastest-growing corals, so mass bleaching events 12 months apart offers zero prospect of recovery for reefs damaged in 2016,” said James Kerry, a senior research officer at the ARC.
Repeated damage could prompt UNESCO's World Heritage Committee to reconsider a 2015 decision not to put the Great Barrier Reef on its "in danger" list. Tourists drawn to the unique attraction spend A$5.2 billion ($3.9 billion) each year, a 2013 Deloitte Access Economics report estimated.
http://www.voanews.com/a/cyclone-str...f/3803610.html
UNESCO opts against 'in danger' status...
Great Barrier Reef: Unesco opts against 'in danger' status
Thu, 06 Jul 2017: Unesco opts against upgrading the reef's status, but raises concerns over conservation progress.
Unesco has decided not to place the Great Barrier Reef on its official list of World Heritage sites "in danger". Unprecedented back-to-back coral bleaching events had intensified debate about whether Unesco should change the status of Australia's reef. Listing a site as "in danger" can help address threats by, for example, unlocking access to funds or publicity. Australia welcomed the decision as support for its conservation measures, but Unesco also made criticisms. The ruling was made at a Unesco World Heritage Committee meeting in Poland.
The Great Barrier Reef was given World Heritage status in 1981
Australian Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg described it as a "big win" for his nation. "We are taking every action possible to ensure this great wonder of the world stays viable and healthy for future generations to come," he told an Australian Broadcasting Corp radio programme. In its draft decision released earlier this week, Unesco said Australia had taken several significant steps to preserve the reef under its Reef 2050 Plan.
However, it criticised Australia's slow progress in improving water quality, noting some conservation targets were "not expected to be achieved within the foreseen timeframe". The heritage body also called on Australia to better tackle the issue of land clearing. Echoing studies by scientists, Unesco said climate change remained the reef's most significant threat. It called on Australia to provide a comprehensive update on its protection efforts by December 2019.
Heritage classifications
Unesco has named 1,052 sites of environmental and cultural importance, such as the reef, on its World Heritage List. It keeps a separate list of places in danger of losing heritage status, currently numbering 55. In addition to potentially accessing World Heritage Committee-allocated funds, being on the danger list also alerts the international community, who might contribute funds themselves or technical expertise. The reef - a vast collection of thousands of smaller coral reefs stretching from the northern tip of Queensland to the state's southern city of Bundaberg - was given World Heritage status in 1981.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-40515367
‘Godfather of Coral’ out to Help Save Australia’s Great Barrier Reef...
‘Godfather of Coral’ on New Mission to Help Save Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
November 18, 2017 — The so-called ‘godfather of coral’ is part of a new research mission to unlock some of the secrets of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Dr. Charlie Veron is part of a scientific team searching for the “super corals” that managed to survive consecutive years of bleaching on the world’s largest reef system.
Charlie Veron is one of the world's leading experts on coral reefs. Born in Sydney, he is known as the ‘godfather of coral’ because he has discovered so many different species. He is part of the Great Barrier Reef Legacy mission, which is taking eight teams of scientists on a voyage to map and test the health of remote parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. They are searching for so-called ‘super corals’ that managed to survive the past two years of devastating coral bleaching events.
Veron says the reef is in sharp decline. “It is gut-wrenching and I have lived with this now for close on 20 years," he said. "The predictions that scientists made well over a decade ago have all turned out to be spot on. Well, this is a very important trip because we are actually seeing for ourselves what corals are vulnerable to mass bleaching and what corals are surviving mass bleaching. So, once we know that we will be able to make smart decisions about coral, so the trip is really quite pivotal.”
Great Barrier Reef, Australia, Pacific Ocean.
In April, researchers discovered that for the first time mass bleaching had affected the Great Barrier Reef in consecutive years, damaging two-thirds of the World Heritage-listed area. When it bleaches, the coral is not dead, but it begins to starve and can eventually die. The reefs, though, are resilient, but what concerns scientists is that more frequent bleaching, which is caused by rising water temperatures, makes it harder for the coral to recover. Bleaching occurs when corals under stress drive out the algae that give them color.
Scientists believe that the main threat to the reef that stretches 2,300 kilometers down the Queensland coast in northern Australia is climate change. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is about the size of Italy or Japan and is so big it can be seen from outer space. It is home to more than 3,000 types of mollusks and 30 species of whales and dolphins.
https://www.voanews.com/a/godfather-...f/4122341.html
Starfish Eating Australia's Great Barrier Reef...
Starfish Eating Australia's Great Barrier Reef Alarm Scientists
January 04, 2018 — A major outbreak of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish has been found munching Australia's world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, scientists said Friday, prompting the government to begin culling the spiky marine animals.
The predator starfish feeds on corals by spreading its stomach over them and using digestive enzymes to liquefy tissue, and the outbreak hits as the reef is still reeling from two consecutive years of major coral bleaching. "Each starfish eats about its body diameter a night, and so over time that mounts up very significantly," Hugh Sweatman, a senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio. "A lot of coral will be lost," he said. That would be a blow for both the ecosystem and the lucrative tourism industry which it supports. The crown-of-thorns starfish were found in plague proportions last month in the Swains Reefs, at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, by researchers from the reef's Marine Park Authority, a spokeswoman for the authority told Reuters by phone.
Crown-of-thorns starfish — native predatory coral-feeding starfish which have risen to plague-like levels — are displayed after being removed from the Great Barrier Reef
The remote reefs, about 200 km (120 miles) offshore from Yeppoon, a holiday and fishing town some 500 km north of Queensland state capital, Brisbane, are well south of the most-visited sections of the Great Barrier Reef, where most culling efforts are focused. But the government's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority already killed some starfish at Swains Reefs in December and will mount another mission this month, a director at the authority, Fred Nucifora, told the ABC. "The complexity with the Swains Reef location is ... they are logistically difficult to access and it is actually quite a hostile environment to work in," Nucifora said.
Previous outbreaks
There have been four major crown-of-thorns outbreaks since the 1960s in the Great Barrier Reef, but it recovered each time because there were always healthy populations of herbivorous fish. The outbreaks are usually triggered by extra nutrients in the water but the reason for the current outbreak was unclear, Sweatman said. The reef is still recovering from damage wrought by the worst-ever coral bleaching on record, which in 2016 killed two-thirds of a 700 km stretch of reef.
A tourist swims on the Great Barrier Reef
On Friday, a report published in the journal Science found that high ocean temperatures are harming tropical corals much more often than a generation ago, putting reefs under pressure. The Great Barrier Reef, covering 348,000 square kilometers, was World Heritage listed in 1981 as the most extensive and spectacular coral reef ecosystem on the planet, according to the UNESCO website.
https://www.voanews.com/a/starfish-e...f/4193417.html
Kacper (01-06-2018)