Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Good Causes

The Maverick Healer: Jesus

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It’s Christmas Day.  An annual event commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.  He was a healer, and in the most empowering of ways.    Sometime just through simple touch.  He was also an outcast, decried by the elites of his time, he was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of Judaea under the emperor Tiberius.  Sentenced to death not because he stole something, or killed someone, but because he challenged their authority and more than anything else tried to bring people together.

Two thousand years later, and I’ve woken up this morning to a story in the Epoch Times about Fired Health Care Workers in the US.

Many health care workers, once hailed as heroes for working throughout the pandemic, now settle into the holiday season without jobs because of their personal medical decisions.

In North Carolina, Carlton DeHart was working as an advanced heart failure coordinator nurse for the Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center in Charlotte when she was fired in September for not meeting the deadline to get vaccinated.

Because DeHart was undergoing fertility treatment, she told The Epoch Times, she decided against it, adding that she didn’t feel comfortable ‘adding a not-long tested unknown into my body.’

She chose not to file for an exemption because, she said, ‘it’s a form of compliance.’

She doesn’t regret the decision, she said, and with the reducing rates of efficacy, changing definitions of what it means to be fully vaccinated, increasing reports of side effects, and the censorship surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines, she’s ‘still determined not to comply.’

Though DeHart misses her team and her patients, she said doesn’t miss the ‘top-down draconian hospital politics’ that pushes allopathic treatment.

Her hope is that the firings will propel a new medical community forward that doesn’t lean into the heavily prescribed drugs, radiation, and surgery but into more innovations outside of orthodox medicine.

‘I think we were moving that way anyway because people weren’t happy with the corporate care they were getting, and this will hurry that along,’ DeHart said.

Today, on this Christmas Day, my heart goes out to all of those who have chosen to transcend the corporate and the mandated and to try a different way.

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I’ve extracted the feature image (at the very top of this blog post) from some drone footage shot by Stuart Ireland flying behind Russell Island from our little boat Kiama, with Rob McCulloch and me.

The Injustice of Blowing-Up Turtles, for Convenience

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It is World Ocean Day, an opportunity to learn more about the Great Barrier Reef and also artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico.

It is an injustice that turtles are blown-up in the Gulf of Mexico because American oil companies choose a particular and inappropriate method for undertaking surveys before setting explosives. If they did underwater, rather than aerial surveys, it would be difficult to ever justify blowing-up biological diverse artificial reefs that are old spent oil rigs. It is also an injustice when aerial surveys are undertaken to falsely conclude the Great Barrier Reef is more than 60 percent bleached, when underwater surveys give a completely different and true assessments. It is also an injustice that the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) had a perfectly good methodology for coring corals under-the-water and calculating an accurate overall average coral growth rates for the Great Barrier Reef, but then they changed the methodology and when the new methodology was shown to be flawed by Peter Ridd they did nothing about it. Last week I was told a new and better overall coral growth rate will soon be published for the Great Barrier Reef – but the methodology is not, and will not, be available for scrutiny, especially not to Peter Ridd who was sacked by James Cook University for suggesting there needs to be some checking – some quality assurance. Let me explain in more detail, including about the turtles.

Late last year I went to sea for a week with Shaun Frichette. I’m a biologist, and I was searching for 400-year-old corals that can be 10-metres wide and have annual growth rings, like tree rings, they are in the genus Porites. Large and very old Porites corals used to be cored to calculate an overall coral growth rate for the Great Barrier Reef. Shaun came on the trip at short notice, wanting to know first-hand the state of the Great Barrier Reef; he had heard it was dying. He was working as a volunteer at a turtle rehabilitation centre on Fitzroy Island, which is just to the south-east of Cairns and part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Ten years ago, he worked as a deep-sea diver in the Gulf of Mexico.

He got into deep sea diving in his late twenties because he had developed a passion for environmental issues especially marine conservation. At the time, he figured if an oil pipe was leaking on the sea floor it took a diver to go down and fix it, so he trained as a commercial diver and went to Louisiana. He did lots of diving on the oil rigs as well as working topside on saturation systems and diver tending. His goal at the time was to become a saturation diver and live life ‘like an astronaut’ except on the sea floor. To achieve that goal, Shaun knew he would have to put in years of hard work proving himself in the industry, but he never realized that the industry would meanwhile prove to care so little for life under-the-sea. For example, the oil companies, trained him to cut through steel with torches that burn at over 10 thousand degrees so that spent oil rigs could be dismantled safely – but instead they sent him down to the bottom of the ocean to plant explosives because it was faster to decommission a rig that way.

Shaun remembers:

The oil companies would send ‘turtle girls’ up in a helicopter to scout dolphins and sea turtles and if they gave the ‘all clear’ charges would go off and we would return to location. The problem was those oil rig platforms become like coral reefs after years of being submerged and the sea life around them is so biodiverse and special.

The turtle girls could only see 5 meters underwater on a good day so what I witnessed was horrific. Turtles cut in half, wounded dolphins and thousands of floating fish stunned from the explosions.

Something changed inside of me after seeing that and it’s altered my life path ever since.

Shaun quit and soon found himself back in California, in the High Sierra, at Lake Tahoe where he first learnt to Scuba dive. He bought into a dive business doing boat salvage and dock repairs during the summer months – while volunteering for marine conservation projects during the winter months when the lake froze over. The bushfires happened in Australia during the 2019-2020 ‘off season’ and after hearing news reports, Shaun volunteered as a fire fighter and came to Australia. Covid hit, and so he stayed-on. First helping with wildlife rescue, before travelling north to see the Great Barrier Reef.

I met Shaun late November 2020 at a café in Cairns. It was the day before we set-off with underwater photographer Stuart Ireland on a hurriedly arranged week at sea. The plan was to look for, and film, a particular type of coral known as Porites with annual growth rings, like tree rings, so they are potentially a time capsule of the ocean’s climate history. We wanted to find the oldest and largest of these corals that AIMS used to core, all the way to Myrmidon reef where there was once an extensive coral coring program.

Some of these Porites corals are huge. Just last year I measured a healthy Porites coral seven metres in width and three metres high, at an inshore reef called Pixie Reef just 40 kilometres to the northeast of Cairns. This is a reef that is classified in the peer-reviewed literature as one of the very worst bleached (more than 60%), yet I’ve struggled to find any bleaching at all at that reef. I’ve also seen Porites large and healthy, in fact dozens of them, in Bowen Harbour where all the corals are meant to be dead from global warming and ocean acidification and poor water quality – yet they are very much alive, or were, when I was there in April and then August 2019. Just three weeks ago at Lady Elliot Island to the east of Bundaberg I found a Porites that was 4 metres in height and so healthy. I asked the local divers if it has ever bleached and I was told by an old guy who has worked on the island for thirty years that it once went blue in colour after a cold snap, that was a few years ago, but that it has never bleached.

Shaun swimming over massive Porites at the Great Barrier Reef in November 2020.

We are repeatedly told, most recently by the Australian Academy of Science, that most (somewhere between 50 and 99%) of the hard corals of the Great Barrier Reef are now dead yet this is not my experience as someone who snorkels and dives. I have seen very large and dead Porites, but not often. Perhaps as often as a I see a dead tree in my favourite national parks.

One of my frustrations with the official reporting on the health of the Great Barrier Reef is that much of it is based on aerial surveys. Not by turtle-girls, but by a university professor. Like the aerial surveys in the Gulf of Mexico, the surveys might be best described as convenient. They are certainly not scientific; despite being published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The fly-past aerial surveys give the impression they are quantitative and claim that the entire Great Barrier Reef is more than 60% bleached, but the only numbers actually recorded by Professor Terry Hughes looking out the plane window are rankings of 1, 2, 3 or 4 based on his impression of the state of the corals from that high altitude.

At 150-metres altitude he might be just able to just make-out the very large Porites at Pixie Reef on a good day. I sent my drone up and took photographs at 40 and 120-metres altitude of that monster coral that measures 7 metres in width on 25th November 2020. It appeared white and possibly bleached from the air. Yet under the water and up-close it was beige in colour, with healthy zooxanthellae. There was absolutely no bleaching. I gave the coral a score of D3 on the University of Queensland Coral Watch Health Chart (www.coralwatch.org). But who else actually goes to check?

To lament the dying Great Barrier Reef is politically correct, to question this is to risk being labelled a climate change contrarian. Yet my experience over 50 years of diving at the Great Barrier Reef – since January 2020 I have had the opportunity to SCUBA dive almost the entire length of the Great Barrier Reef from the Ribbon Reefs to Lady Elliot Island including dozens of reefs in-between – is that they are still exceptionally diverse and beautiful. The 2016 bleaching event was reportedly the most severe on record, particularly in the northern section including at the Ribbons Reefs, yet most of the reefs appear to be fully recovered.

When university professor Peter Ridd explained the extent of the misrepresentation back in 2015 in an email to a News Ltd journalist, specifically that there are still healthy live corals in Bowen Harbour, while calling out a colleague claiming otherwise, he was reprimanded by James Cook University. To publicly demand some quality assurance of claims the reef is dead and dying is professional suicide. The professor’s dismissal from James Cook University in 2018 – essentially on the basis that he broke the enterprise bargaining agreement by being un-collegial – has been appealed all the way to the High Court of Australia, with that hearing scheduled for 23rd June 2021. The Peter Ridd case is focused on issues of freedom of speech. Not because Peter does not care about the truth, but because the only way we might be able to get to the truth about the health of the Great Barrier Reef is if he can put his evidence – he needs to first have the opportunity to be heard beyond the academic journals that are behind paywalls.

Back in 2013 Peter Ridd published an analysis of how the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) has changed the method they use for coring the Porites corals to calculate an average growth rate for the Great Barrier Reef. The method has essentially been changed for convenience. The data then showed a drop after 1990 that is conveniently consistent with the narrative that the Great Barrier Reef is dying – never mind that the new method is flawed.

Coral growth rate (calcification rate) on the GBR for the 20th century. Left Chart: Coral growth rates calculated by AIMS showing drastic reduction after 1990 and prediction (red dot) for 2020. Right Chart: Reanalysed to account for measurement errors and sampling problems by Peter Ridd. Green dot is the alternative prediction for 2020.
Note: There is no data of the GBR-average growth rate since 2005.

In the 2013 research article in Marine Geology, Peter Ridd explains that firstly there are instrumental errors with the measurements of the Porites annual growth rings undertaken in the early 2000s. This is especially the case for the last layer at the surface of the coral, which was often measured as being much smaller than the reality. This created an apparent drop in the average calcification for the corals that were collected in the early 2000s – falsely implying a recent calcification (growth rate) drop. Secondly, an ‘age effect’ was not acknowledged, specifically the coring program in 2003, 2004 and 2005 focused on smaller colonies, many just a few tens of centimetres in diameter. In summary, while coring in the 1980s focused on large old corals and their growth bands were accurately measured, coring in the early 2000s focused on small young corals and when some of the measurements were checked they were found to be in error.

Yet the two datasets (from the 1980s and early 2000s) were spliced together, and wholly unjustifiable assumptions were implicitly made, but not stated – in particular that there is no age effect on coral growth. Coral growth rates are a potential measure of reef health, but the methodology needs to be consistent. When the data to 2005 is filtered for only the largest and oldest Porites corals, it shows an increase in calcification rates (coral growth rates).

I have made a short film about all of this: showing the Porites, how they used to be cored with archival footage, and also Peter Ridd is interviewed explaining the inconsistencies in the methodology. Towards the end of the film Peter Ridd is actually interviewed by turtle-man Shaun Frichette, and Shaun shows what we found during that week at sea last November all the way to Myrmidon reef in search of the oldest and largest Porites. Myrmidon is nearly 200 kms to the north north-east of Townsville. It is a detached coral reef exposed to the full force of the Pacific Ocean and to continual upwellings from the deep.

In the film we lament that the large old corals at Myrmidon are no longer cored by AIMS to know the climate history of this coral reef on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Last Thursday (3 June 2021), I received a phone call from an AIMS scientist, who told me that he still cores some of the old and healthy Porites. He claimed my new film is potentially misrepresenting the AIMS coring program.

I had been trying to talk with someone at AIMS about their coring program for months. In an email sent to AIMS director Paul Hardisty on 10 November 2020, Peter Ridd asked permission for me to film their largest and oldest coral cores and interview Janice Lough for my film – Peter Ridd began his career at AIMS in the 1980s, and was once a colleague of Janice, which was back when many of these cores were first collected. Paul Hardisty never replied to that email.

The scientist who phoned me last Thursday morning explained AIMS will soon be publishing a new overall coral growth rate for the Great Barrier Reef, and that the coring program has not stopped. I was appreciative of the phone call and asked to see the data since 2005 because in my new short film, Peter Ridd explains the coring program to calculate an average coral growth rate for the Great Barrier Reef stopped in 2005 – and that the data to this point is flawed.

In response to this request, I was sent a research paper about coring young Porites corals that was published in 2014, based on coral coring data collected in 2003, 2004 and 2005. I replied to the scientist that it is now 2021! Where is the data for the last 16 years – and how does the new data address the methodological issues detailed by Peter Ridd in his paper published in Marine Geology back in 2013?

What I found most interesting about the technical paper sent to me last Thursday afternoon, is that it laments coral bleaching as something that can cause a ‘growth hiatus’ in the large old Porites, but nowhere does it suggest coral bleaching actually kills these old corals. Also, the paper claims bleaching is a new phenomenon while presenting no data for the period before 1980. Yet AIMS has coral cores that date back to the 1600s, potentially providing 400 years of data including on the incidence of coral bleaching.

Deceit when it comes to issues of great public interest is not new. We have the choice as individuals to close our minds to new information that doesn’t necessarily accord with established narratives, or alternatively reflect on information that at a first glance appear anomalous. We are no better than those who choose to do aerial surveys knowing full well that turtles live under-the-sea, if we only hear and read that which accords with preexisting narratives that keep us conveniently connected to the status quo while misunderstanding the true state of the Great Barrier Reef. If we really care about something, we should want to know everything about it.

Today, on World Ocean Day, my short film starring both Peter Ridd and also Shaun Frichette, will premiere at The Majestic Theatre, in Pomona, not far from where I live. I am so grateful to the ninety people who have already bought their tickets. The bar opens at 2pm, the screening will be at 3pm.

Last Thursday I did extend an invitation to the AIMS scientist who phoned me, I suggested that he come to this screening. I explained that it would be possible to hold a questions and answers session after the screening, that we could even invite some local media so AIMS could clearly explain and hopefully show the last 16 years of data. I was told that this would not be possible.

On 10 June 2021, the IPA will premiere ‘Finding Porites’ on YouTube and also Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/Inst.ofPublicAffairs/videos/1223155594867184/

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The feature image, at the very top of this blog post, shows Jennifer Marohasy with a turtle at the Great Barrier Reef in April 2006.

Jennifer Marohasy and Shaun Frichette onboard Kiama during the filming of ‘Finding Porites’

Tarenorerer, Another Warrior

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I went to my favourite local bookshop last week (River Read) looking to be entertained and distracted. I settled on an historical romance. I chose ‘The Burning Island’ by Jock Serong, published just last September.

After reading the back cover and flicking through, I knew I was buying into a story that begins in Sydney about 200 years ago with the main character a tall, cynical spinster who sets off on an adventure. I also noted that it was about a shipwreck, specifically the Britomart – wrecked off the coast of Tasmania in 1839 under suspicious circumstances. I had recently visited a coral reef called Britomart.

Eliza Grayling is conflicted and a paradox – and thus so human. Her relationship with her father is fraught, and through the story she proves a very poor judge of character in many ways.

But then again how fully can we know another person. And how can we know when we are being betrayed or misled – whether by a person, a group, an institution or the zeitgeist of our civilization?

If you never trust, and you never submit, then you can never be betrayed – or at least never be betrayed again. But what can you build? There is the African proverb if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far – go together.

In Serong’s story/The Burning Island, Tarenorerer is an Aboriginal woman of about the same age as Eliza Grayling, who takes Eliza prisoner and then eventually befriends her.

According to Aboriginal folklore Tarenorerer was a terrorist and a freedom fighter who would never give up, or give in.

In 1828 she assembled warbands of both men and women and trained them to use muskets against white settlers and to kill their livestock.

In reading the story of Tarenorerer I am reminded that resistance fighters almost inevitably lose the war, even if they have a few victories in battle along the way. But there will always be such warriors who exist beyond culture and colour – they are an archetype representing a specific set of universal, recognizable human behaviours, and they emerge when there is profound injustice.

I’m writing this on 26th January, a day variously referred to here in Australia as ‘Invasion Day’ or ‘Australia Day’. My colleague at the IPA, John Roskam, has just released a video, with former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, about the importance of Australian values and that they are under attack. I don’t share all the same values as these two conservative men, but I share many of the same values. Most importantly they encourage the pursuit of the truth and its continual testing, always and only against the evidence.

We can, and should, argue about whether our national day be celebrated on 26 January, or 3rd December – the day of the Eureka Stockade. Better still, let’s make it a day in the future: the day the Murray River’s estuary is restored by blasting the Mundo barrage/sea dyke, or the day Peter Ridd gets his job back at James Cook University, or the day the Australian Bureau of Meteorology restores 3rd January 1909 as the hottest day ever recorded in Australia.

But these things will never be achieved unless we get together under a common banner with some agreed and shared values, against the hegemony.

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The Feature image is by Robert Hawker Dowling – Robert Dowling | Group of Natives of Tasmania, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12635841

Gardens of Old Porites, Without Sharks

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It is often reported that the Great Barrier Reef is half dead, specifically that the corals are bleached, and the water quality is degraded with pesticides and plastics. If I didn’t know better, I might never want to visit a coral reef, lest I be forced to confront this reality – apparently all our fault. Except the coral reefs that I dived last week each made me feel so alive, and in awe of their extraordinary beauty – especially Myrmidon reef which is an ancient and detached coral reef that juts out into the Pacific Ocean on the eastern edge of the Great Barrier Reef. But we didn’t see many sharks.

The sparse reef crest at Myrmidon with Stuart measuring out 10 metres for the first transect, while also holding his camera.

The coral reef called Myrmidon is perhaps as old as the city of Troy. In mythology, that city existed about 5,000 years ago and it was attacked by Achilles and 50 ships each carrying 50 Myrmidons. Paleo-climatologists will argue that that geological period, known as the middle Holocene (7,000 to 4,500 years ago), was much warmer than the present with sea levels at least 1.5 metres higher than they are today along the east coast of Australia including at the Great Barrier Reef.

Perhaps everything seemed unusually magical last Wednesday at Myrmidon because I dived into such crystal-clear water, and it was so sunny. Looking back over the video footage, Myrmidon reef did not have particularly luxurious corals, but there was an iridescence and a beauty that I’ve not seen before. It was so evident that the live corals were growing on-top of dead corals, not one or two generations dead, but representing thousands of years of growth and destruction from cyclones and bleaching events. The reef was unashamedly beautiful yet with so much exposed that represented layers and layers of dead coral. The regrowth was so clearly on eroded antecedent surfaces.

Where we first jumped in at Myrmidon, the coral was sparse and stunted and there were piles of coral rubble some newly dead and covered in green algae. My dive-buddy Shaun, and underwater videographer Stuart, swam with me around a ledge that led us down into an underwater canyon. Green parrot fish swam metres above a giant clam with an ink black body speckled with florescent blue zooxanthellae. I knelt beside it, I was 17 metres under-the-water and feeling part of another world. Stuart was not too far away, deciding which of the massive Porites along the walls of the canyon we would measure, and Shaun would photograph – then we ran the photographic transect.

Porites are the old boulder corals, which like the oldest trees in temperate forests, can be cored to reveal a climate history. I was not at Myrmidon to core the Porites, but just to find out if any still existed and to measure and photograph them – as well as running the photographic transects. But really, I just wanted to sit next to the black clam speckled blue, which had thick olive-green shiny lips and watch it breathe and feed through its two siphons.

We cruised a total of 263 nautical miles (nearly 500 kilometres) last week in search of the old corals, the Porites.

We left Cairns on Saturday 28th November, and spent the first night moored behind Russell Island, which is part of the Franklin Island Group just to the east of the town of Babinda. On the first day we dived the fringing reef of High Island, the next day Normanby, and after that Britomart. There were so many massive Porites at the reef fringing High Island and also at Normanby. We didn’t find any Porites at Britomart. That was perhaps because we only had an afternoon to search, and I made the wrong calls in terms of where we should jump-in, which is perhaps why we didn’t find any Porites at Britomart.

At the first dive site at Britomart, which had been my call, there were huge plate corals under-the-water that I had mistaken as Porites from above the water. These corals were mostly dead, probably from a severe bleaching back in 2016 and then 2017.

But it wasn’t all death and destruction at Britomart. At the second site, where only Stuart jumped-in to the strong current with just his snorkel, he found and filmed large plate corals – so alive. There was some extraordinary biodiversity at Britomart including a school of black Dory – there was also evidence of severe bleaching. We only saw a single white tipped reef shark at that reef.

Every reef that we dived was so variable and each of the different habitats at Pixie, Britomart and Myrmidon had a different ensemble of coral species and forms. But at each reef we only found a single shark. Each of these reefs had a distinct reef crest that might have been more luxurious, and with better coral cover, some 5,000 years ago at the time of the mythical Myrmidons – simply because back then these reefs would have been younger and growing up with the sea level that was higher back then, the corals having grown-up 120 metres since the depth of the last ice age which was just 16,000 years ago. Since at least 2,500 years ago these coral reefs have had to adapt to an overall trend of falling sea levels, not with-standing the modest increase of perhaps 36 cm over the last 100 years – as reported by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The reef crests at Britomart and Myrmidon today are flat topped and mostly dead, as they are eroded peaks now just below mean low tide growing back after bleaching events, to be smashed again by the huge waves that come with the cyclones.

Coral cover at the crests, which is the most exposed part of the reef, is generally sparser and the corals stumpy, while only a few metres further down under the water it is sometimes possible to find delicate plate corals, at Myrmidon perhaps regrowing since the last cyclone. It is so difficult to generalize about a coral reef, when there is such diversity within and between habitats even at the same reef.

Small plate corals, at Myrmidon.

It was on the second dive at Myrmidon, that we found the garden of Porites. That was a highlight of the week at sea for me. I had gone in search of Porites. I had no idea whether I would find them or not. At Myrmidon we found a whole garden of Porites – massive corals in different colours and each so healthy. In the same coral garden were blue and also a heavenly-white Acropora – so tall, and each branch had a florescent blue tip. Little Chromis fish (Damsel fish) trimmed in yellow, swam in and out.

The skipper, Rob, had warned me in the weeks leading up to the expedition that there was no guarantee we would get all the way to Myrmidon in our 14-metre boat. It all depended on the weather, he said.

Last Wednesday, a week ago, Rob not only got us to Myrmidon, but we found so many Porites and in crystal clear waters.

Stuart and Rob made the decision about where to anchor for the second dive, they found me the garden of Porites. There were perhaps 50 of these massive boulder-shaped corals many more than 2 metres in diameter not far from the boat and at just 8 metres below the water. Perhaps there are another 50 gardens of Porites at Myrmidon reef? That can be my hypothesis!

If only we had the resources to stay, search and survey we could perhaps find as many massive Porites as there were Myrmidons (50) on each of the ships (50) that sailed with Achilles to defeated Hector in the ancient Greek tale – that would make 2,500 massive Porites just at Myrmidon reef! And Myrmidon is just one of nearly 3,000 coral reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef.

Shaun swimming over some of the massive Porites in the coral garden at Myrmidon.

There are certainly enough massive Porites still alive for scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), to calculate an average coral growth rate for the Great Barrier Reef over the last 100 to 300 years – as they used to do by coring Porites from inner, middle and outer reefs including Myrmidon. They stopped coring the Porites at Myrmidon more than 15 years ago.

We only found the one shark at Myrmidon – a small and curious white tipped reef shark that tasted Stuart’s flipper on the second dive, and almost head-butted Shaun at the beginning of their night dive. These sharks (Triaenodon obesus) are more curious than aggressive, which may explain why numbers have apparently declined over the last few decades – apparently as a minor bycatch of the Coral Reef Fin Fish Fishery. The last attempt to properly quantify their numbers is documented in a PhD thesis by William Robins published back in 2006. He claims fishing is the problem.

I’ve heard so many stories about shark finning, even in Great Barrier Reef waters as far south as Lady Elliot Island. Finning involves removing the dorsal, pelvic, pectoral and caudal fins and then throwing the live shark back into the water – where it can only sink to the bottom and die. Best estimates suggest 73 million (!) sharks are finned each year across the world to make soup for rich Asians.

There is so much money from the long-suffering Australian tax payer, via the Australian government, for activist scientists claiming the reef is at risk of climate change, but very little political will to address any of the many threats to sharks in Great Barrier Reef waters. Yet the evidence suggests shark numbers are in decline, not only from finning but also drumlines set by the Queensland government, ostensibly to protect those who swim at north Queensland beaches.

I’m hoping to go back to Pixie Reef, just to the north east of Cairns, in early February to finishing filming for the documentary about our week at sea – last week. In the new year, I want to film some more at Pixie Reef, including Shaun swimming with the resident white-tipped reef shark that Stuart often sees there.

The reefs at Myrmidon, Normanby, High Island and Pixie have so many old Porites, but so few reef sharks.

Working from evidence – including the photographic evidence amassed by us last week, from the photographs taken by Shaun along the underwater transects set by Stuart, and from Stuart’s drone photography in the air above, for at least two different habitat types at each of the reef we visited – I hope there can one day be more agreement about the current state of the corals at the Great Barrier Reef. It would certainly be helpful if some of the many scientists at AIMS returned in one of their big ships to Myrmidon and cored at least a few of the many massive old Porites. They could recommence the program of coring, beginning at Myrmidon, to test the hypothesis that as water temperatures increase coral growth rates will increase too. This could be determined from the annual growth rings once the cores were in the laboratory and under X-ray.

I would also sleep better knowing that there was funding to monitor white-tipped reef sharks. At the moment, about 600 sharks are killed each year on drumlines including reef sharks, then there is the by-catch from the legal fisheries, and then there are those who fin sharks because there is a market.

I surmise that the corals are not threatened by global warming, certainly not by sea level rise, but that the few remaining sharks at Myrmidon, and many other reefs, are at risk from those intent on defeating them, or eating their fins. Indeed, I’m hoping that as Achilles slayed Hector with the help of the Myrmidons, we can begin to acknowledge the hubris of trying to tame Zeus/the weather, while mercilessly denying everything good that sharks represent, including being curious and keeping mid-level predators in check, so that the algae-eating fish can thrive.

Jen measuring a massive Porites at Myrmidon.

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The feature image, at the very top of this blog post, is of our boat Kiama as we arrived at Myrmidon reef. The skipper, Rob McCulloch, has put some unedited aerial drone footage taken by Stuart of our boat, Kiama, sailing into Myrmidon, at his YouTube page, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLtN4deEi10

I am so grateful to the B. Macfie Family Foundation and the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) for funding the expedition.

Shaun and Jen/me about to jump in at Normanby reef.
Stuart and Jen, top-side at Myrmidon after the first dive.
Wizz and Dennis on the back deck. So much thanks for looking out for us, and looking after us.
The team: Stuart, Jen, Walt (joined us at Maggie Island), Shaun, Rob, Peter Ridd and Dennis … thanks Wizz for capturing the moment.

Critical Thinking – First Requires an Understanding of the Basics

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I once assumed everyone knew how to read graphs (charts), but I was wrong. So wrong. Of course, graphs are a quick way to understand patterns in data. They are a quick way to test whether a claim is supported by the data, or not.

But graphs are something quite abstract and they were only invented in the 17th Century, by Rene Descartes.

A chart/graph showing monthly temperatures at Antarctica from my new book, ‘Climate Change: The Facts 2020’.

Before anyone can read a graph with confidence, that person has to understand the concept of measurement, understand the number plane (x-axis and y-axis coordinates), and more generally be confident in the language of mathematics.

Everyone wants to be clever, and unique and we all are, in our own way. But to think critically and logically, how much of this needs to be taught? And how much of this can be taught?

I have an old school friend, who has spent her entire career teaching children, and she specialises in teaching mathematics. She was staying with me recently, and commented, “Mathematics has its own language. If a child is ‘stubbing their toe’ on the basic concepts, how will they ever progress to see patterns. How will they ever have confidence reading a graph.”

Catherine also explained to me that children are individuals, thus they develop and mature at different stages. Some need a longer time to consolidate their knowledge base. This includes repetition and practice and can be achieved though fun games and quizzes – and even baking cakes.

The number of parents and grandparents who complain to me about numerical illiteracy and the lack of critical thinking, but don’t know what to do about it.

Catherine has a particular technique for teaching children how to memorise words and number facts. Her NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) method uses visual and auditory memory.

You may argue, “But that is not critical thinking! That is just memorising.”

Her point is, there is no genuine capacity for sophisticated analysis without first grasping the basics and much of this is straight learning that can be facilitated through these visual memory techniques.

To be clear, many children (who grow to become adults) lack confidence in mathematics due to not grasping ‘the basics’, not understanding the language of maths. It does have to be taught, and the more practical the better.

Catherine’s advice for teaching fractions, for example, is do some cooking together.

One of my favourite dessert recipes from Donna Hay’s book ‘Off the Shelf: Cooking from the Pantry’.

Follow the recipe carefully and discuss, perhaps before you even start cooking, the units of measurement and how the ingredient can be divided-up. Finally, work out how the cake can be cut-up (divided), including to ensure everyone gets some and possibly two or even three pieces each. :-).

That got me thinking about possible ways to teach the number plane and coordinates so kids (and adults) have more confidence with charts.

I remember as a kid playing the board game ‘battle ships’, where each ship has its own coordinates to be bombed. Catherine actually plays this game to teach the order of x and y coordinates.

For more information you can contact Catherine who is swap-tutoring.com.au

Catherine tutors children online through her business SWAP (Students with a Purpose).

Roaring in Defiance, with Helen Reddy, Craig Kelly and Zoe Buhler

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Originally from Melbourne, musician Helen Reddy wrote such an inspiring song about women ‘in numbers too big to ignore’ back in 1971. That was when my mother was telling me ‘It’s a man’s world’, while at the same time providing me with every opportunity to succeed.

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an’ pretend
‘Cause I’ve heard it all before
And I’ve been down there on the floor
No one’s ever gonna keep me down again
Oh yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain

Just two days ago my friend Craig Kelly MP put these inspiring words to images of women being accosted and arrested by Victorian police. Some may claim it inappropriate for a man to be claiming a woman’s song … but Craig Kelly doesn’t see gender or colour in the issues confronting ordinary Victorians right now. Craig Kelly sees injustice and he has reached for a song and images full of emotion that show defiance.

There is a need, at this point in our shared history, for more defiance.

Meanwhile the Australian Communications Media Authority (ACMA), the very institution here in Australia that should be protecting free speech, is calling for Craig Kelly’s Facebook posts to be censored … to be removed.

In defiance, I urge you to become a fan at: https://www.facebook.com/CraigKellyMP/ .

There is power in numbers, and there can also be power in one. Craig Kelly used to chat with me about the fraud that is the Renewable Energy Target (RET), then he turned the tables on Malcolm Turnbull, resulting in Turnbull’s downfall as Prime Minister as I’ve explained previously.

A key complaint from various elites has been Craig Kelly’s criticism of government bureaucrats that in his view have interfered in the sanctity of the doctor – patient relationship, which has resulted in hydroxy-chloroquine being withheld from Australians to treat Covid.

There has certainly been a vicious campaign against this drug by those who have much to gain financially from alternatives, including from the development and mandating of a Covid vaccine. Most surprisingly, the same week Craig Kelly was explaining how the Oxford University trial into hydroxy-chloroquine inexplicably and inappropriately administered a grossly excessive, toxic and potentially lethal over-dose to almost 1,500 people in their trial (and wondered why many started to die), our government was announcing money for the ‘Oxford vaccine’.

My mother had me vaccinated, and I ensured my daughter was vaccinated, but let me roar right here and now: I shall never willingly be vaccinated with a brew concocted by Oxford university professors who either knowingly or unwittingly administered a toxic over-dose of hydroxycholoroquine to naive participants at hundreds of British hospitals just a few months ago.

And let me also roar my support again for all the women in Victoria, who like Zoe Buhler, have taken a stand for freedom and against tyranny. Just today my friend Andrew Cooper started a fundraising appeal for Zoe. She is going to need about $300,000 to fund her legal defence, you can donate here:
https://give.libertyworks.org.au/free-zoe-buhler

Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
(Strong)
I am invincible
(Invincible)
I am woman

You can bend but never break me
‘Cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
‘Cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul

Thank you Craig Kelly for the reminder that we can all be strong, that we can grow in convection from adversity … that it can make us even more determined.

*******

The feature image at the top of this blog post is of three young women paddling against the tide/defying the surf at my local beach late this afternoon. It is not easy getting a board out in the cold in the late afternoon beyond the breakers … but they made it look easy. We can all practice, and get stronger, in our own way and in our own time.

And about Oxford University and Hydroxy-chloroquine some notes:

The UK study into the effects of hydroxy-chloroquine (HCQ) known as The Recovery trial (sponsored by Bill Gates and others) has been much reported in the popular press with claims that HCQ doesn’t work and is dangerous. In this study, 1561 patients were randomly allocated to receive hydroxy-chloroquine and of these 418 (26.8%) died within 28 days.

A further 3155 patients were concurrently allocated to ‘usual care’ (without HCQ) and 788 (25.0%) died within 28 days.

The anti-hydroxy-chloroquine crowd claim this is game, set and match. Donald Trump was wrong and irresponsible.

The first thing to note, however, is that this study looked at late stage patients (average of 9 days post symptoms) that were already very sick. Secondly, the study didn’t include giving patients zinc in combination with HCQ.

Doctors that claim success with HCQ all say the treatment must start virtually immediately after infection and must include Zinc. So, this would suggest The Recovery study is of limited value for evaluating the true efficacy of HQC.

But it actually gets worse.

In the Recovery study, those receiving HCQ were loaded up with a massive dose of 2400 mg of HCQ in the first 24 hours.

They were given 800 mg (4 x tablets) to start with, followed by another 800mg (4 x tablets) six hours later, then another 400 mg (2 x tablets) six hours after that, followed by another 400 mg (2 x tablets) 12 hours later. That’s a total of 2400 mg in the first 24 hours – and then another 400 mg every 12 hours for the next 9 days (unless they died earlier).

In comparison to this treatment 2400 mg in the first day, followed by 800 mg, for the next nine days, was Dr Zelenko’s highly successful treatment with HCQ that used just 2 x tablets twice a today – total 400 mg per day for 5 days.

How could anyone administer such an excessive and toxic amount of HCQ to over 1500 very sick patients?

The France Soir newspaper interviewed one of the principal researchers of the Oxford RECOVERY trials, Martin Landray.

Soir asked the question, ‘How did you decide on the (2400 mg) dosage of hydroxychloroquine?’

The answer by Landray was,’The doses were chosen on the basis of pharmacokinetic modelling and these are in line with the sort of doses that you used for other diseases such as amoebic dysentery.’

The newspaper asked, ‘Are there any maximum dosage for HCQ in the UK?’
Landray replied, ‘I would have to check but it is much larger than the 2400mg, something like six or 10 times that … the HCQ dosage used are not dissimilar to that used, as I said, in for example amoebic dysentery.’

The French newspaper then interviewed Doctor Christian Perronne, a Professor of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine Paris-Ile de France-Ouest, who told them, ‘It is indeed the first time that I learn that we use hydroxychloroquine in amoebic dysentery, in addition to the dose being super-toxic for humans.’

‘The classic treatment for colonic amoebiasis is based on a combination of hydroxyquinolines, tiliquinol and tilbroquinol, whose trade name is Intetrix.’

‘I think they confused hydroxychloroquine with hydroxyquinolines.’

‘If my assumption is correct, it is incompetence. Most serious is the use of a huge, potentially fatal, dose,’ added Professor Perronne.

So, the possibility is, that the excessive, toxic (and potentially fatal) dose that they administered (which coincided with such a high rate of deaths) may have resulted from a mix up in the names of different drugs, by confusing hydroxychloroquine with hydroxyquinolines.

And as a result of this confusion, this likely caused the RECOVERY trial to report an excessively high death rate from HCQ, and this is then used as propaganda by the anti-HCQ crowd to demonise the drug, (which in turn is used to claim Donald Trump was wrong) and then an excuse to prevent it being given to others – when it could save their lives.

Ends.