Great Barrier Reef in crisis as scientists despair at bleaching data

>Prof Hughes has warned Australia now faces a closing window to save the reef by taking decisive action on climate change.

Other stresses

>The 2017 bleaching is likely to be compounded by other stresses on the reef, including the destructive crown-of-thorns starfish and poor water quality. The category-four tropical cyclone Debbie came too late and too far south for its cooling effect to alleviate bleaching.

>But Prof Hughes said its slow movement across the reef was likely to have caused destruction to coral along a path up to 100km wide. “It added to the woes of the bleaching. It came too late to stop the bleaching, and it came to the wrong place,” he said.

>The University of Technology Sydney’s lead reef researcher, marine biologist David Suggett, said that to properly recover, affected reefs needed to be connected to those left untouched by bleaching.

>He said Prof Hughes’s survey results showed such connectivity was in jeopardy. “It’s that connection ultimately that will drive the rate and extent of recovery,” Mr Suggett said. “So if bleaching events are moving around the [Great Barrier Reef] system on an annual basis, it does really undermine any potential resilience through connectivity between neighbouring reefs.”

>Some reef scientists are now becoming despondent. Water quality expert Jon Brodie said the reef was now in a “terminal stage”. Mr Brodie has devoted much of his life to improving water quality on the reef, one of a suite of measures used to stop bleaching.

>He said measures to improve water quality, which were a central tenet of the Australian government’s rescue effort, were failing.

>“We’ve given up. It’s been my life managing water quality, we’ve failed,” Mr Brodie said. “Even though we’ve spent a lot of money, we’ve had no success.”

>Mr Brodie said the compounding effect of back-to-back bleaching, Cyclone Debbie, and run-off from nearby catchments should not be understated.

>“Last year was bad enough, this year is a disaster year,” Mr Brodie said. “The federal government is doing nothing really, and the current programmes, the water quality management is having very limited success. It’s unsuccessful.”

Optimism

>Others remain optimistic, out of necessity. Jon Day was a director of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority for 16 years until retiring in 2014.

>Mr Day, whose expertise lies in protected area planning and management, said the federal government’s approach to protecting the reef was sorely lacking. He said it was taking too relaxed an approach to fishing, run-off and pollution from farming, and the dumping of maintenance dredge spoil.

>The government was far short of the $8.2 billion (€5.8 billion) investment needed to meet water quality targets, he said, and Australia was on track to fail its short-term 2018 water quality targets, let alone achieve more ambitious long-term goals.

>“You’ve got to be optimistic, I think we have to be,” Mr Day said. “But every moment we waste, and every dollar we waste, isn’t helping the issue. We’ve been denying it for so long, and now we’re starting to accept it. But we’re spending insufficient amounts addressing the problem.”

>The Queensland tourism industry raised questions about the reliability of the survey, saying scientists had previously made exaggerated claims about mortality rates and bleaching.

>“There is no doubt that we have had a significant bleaching event off Cairns this time around,” said Col McKenzie, of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators.

>“The far north probably did a little bit better, Port Douglas to Townsille has seen some significant bleaching,” he said. “Fortunately we haven’t seen much mortality at this time, and fortunately the temperatures have fallen.”

>Mr McKenzie said more money needed to be invested in water quality measures, and criticized what he saw as a piecemeal and uncoordinated approach to water quality projects up and down the coast.

La Nina killed the reef more than anything else. Sad but there is little that anyone could have done.

>2017
>cant into hyiene

build islands

>>130939
For a reef that has weathered countless millennia, there's only one significant and extraordinary variable producing extraordinary results.

>“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 that were damaged in 2016,” Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said in a press release. Hughes and his team conducted the aerial survey that confirmed both 2016 and 2017 bleaching events.

>Rising sea temperatures driven by global warming are primarily to blame for the widespread and rapid degradation of the reef. Four mass bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef have now occurred since just 1998; none had ever been recorded before that year. The 2016 event was the most severe.

https://qz.com/954875/now-may-be-your-last-chance-to-see-the-great-barrier-reef/

It's going to be gone, the cause is verticle heat transfer into ocean waters.

>>131029
Yeah, climate change is definitely the main problem here. I find it odd that Australia loves to tout its bizarre animals and nature in general as a reason to visit and yet they do whatever they can to continue mining, using, and exporting coal that could eventually kill off the ecosystems of many of their iconic creatures.

>>132444
>no it's not
Just stop.

>>132459
>How about you stop chanting your psychotic doomsday message
It is certainly spelling doomsday for the Great Barrier Reef.

>>132479
>tell the Earth to stop warming
It is too late. It is beyond the point of no return.
So on the one hand, everyone truly can stop fretting about who is to blame.

>>131029
>>132444
>>132459
>>132479
Go back to Heartland Institute you Fossil Fuel Shill.

>>130877
Reefs are delicate and fragile. Nothing fragile is destined to survive. It's survival of the fittest.

Bamboo. Now that's a bad ass ecosystem. That shit is so tuff it will grow through concrete.

>>132525
It can pierce metal apparently too. Golden bamboo is an invasive species in the americas. Given how quickly it grows and spreads, kind of sounds like the world's worst weed.

>>132525
funny considering bamboo is dying out in its natural climate due to increased global temperatures.

>>132555
this isn't a good thing you monkey.

HURR IT GREEN DAT MEAN SEQUESTRATION RITE???

wrong! fast growing plants & algae don't sequester carbon for shit. in fact, they're net GSG producers because they die out quickly and their decaying biomass becomes fuel for methanogens. climax ecosystems sequester carbon, and they're the ones being slash & burned.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6273/597
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6321/130

>>132578
Discourse on this board has really slowed down, huh? you people got nothing. you run into your holes and pretend tree farms are good for the environment. Enjoy fish dieoffs asshole.