25 million years old Great Barrier Reef dead

Sydney : One of the planet’s greatest living wildernesses was declared no more by leading environmental writer Rowan Jacobsen.

Mr Jacobsen wrote: “The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old."

The posthumous tribute to the UNESCO site - which contains 1,625 species of fish, 3,000 molluscs and 30 different types of whale and dolphin - came as scientists carried out a major investigation into the reef’s greatest enemy – bleaching.

Coral bleaching is what happens when environmental stress impacts on the “symbiotic” relationship between the rock-like living creatures that form the reefs and microscopic algae that give them their incredible colours.

When stressful factors, particularly the warming up of ocean waters because of climate change, take effect, the corals expel the algae, leaving them to become transparent skeletons. Without the algae, the coral then simply starve.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says it has now started the second phase of its in-water survey to assess the impact of this year’s mass coral bleaching event.

It revealed how preliminary findings from a study earlier this year “show 22 per cent of the coral on the Reef died due to the worst mass bleaching event on record”.

Maps have been produced by the marine park authority and show how 85 per cent of this mortality occurred in a 600km stretch of reef between the tip of Cape York and just north of Lizard Island.

Other parts of the reef show coral morality ranging from what it describes as very high levels to parts where no bleaching-induced mortality was detected.

For Mr Jacobsen, events are following the warnings of Charlie Veron, longtime chief scientist for the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef’s most passionate champion who personally discovered 20 percent of the world’s coral species.

In 2009, Mr Veron gave the Royal Society in London a talk, titled: “Is the Great Barrier Reef on Death Row?”

Turning to this year’s events and recognition that large areas of the coral, particularly in the warmer, northern section of the reef, had died, Mr Jacobsen has used Mr Veron's portentious words for his obituary published in Outside.

He quoted Mr Veron from a recent interview: “The whole northern section is trashed. It looks like a war zone. It’s heartbreaking.

“I used to have the best job in the world. Now it’s turned sour... I’m 71 years old now, and I think I may outlive the reef.”