Great Barrier Reef

During the bushfires that devastated so much of southeast Australia, before the pandemic that stopped all the travel, I had the opportunity to spend a whole week on a boat traversing the northeast edge of Australia’s continental shelf – about 60 kms from the mainland. We dived the Ribbon reefs which grow as underwater cliff faces along the continental shelf. They are the true barrier reefs defining the outside edge of the Great Barrier Reef.

The waters were so warm, the corals so colourful, and the fish not at all frightened of me. In fact, as you will see in our short film – what I am calling the ‘official preview’ for a planned longer documentary – a giant cod fish looked me in the eye, and more than once! He came back to me, again and again. We swam together. It was magical.

Our short preview film has just been uploaded to a new page at the Institute of Public Affairs’ website:

ipa.org.au/GreatBarrierReef

For me, the Ribbons at the Great Barrier Reef, are the most special and awe-inspiring place on this planet. I was so privileged to dive them with Emmy Award winning underwater photographer Clint Hempsall in January 2020.

The cinematography by Clint, is so special and you can enjoy it all in our official preview for ‘Clowns at the Ribbon’s Edge’! It will only take 12 minutes of your time. Come under-the-sea with me and meet the cod. The short film has been set to music all composed by a local hero and Noosa guitarist Mungo Coats.

Corals come in so many different colours and intricate forms. It is the hard corals that create reefs, and reefs are spectacular, beautiful structures. They are home to so many different creatures not just giant fish, but also sea anemones, sharks and sea snakes. The Great Barrier Reef as one ecosystem, comprises nearly 3000 individual reefs stretching for 2000 kilometres. It is visible from outer space. Damaged areas can always be found somewhere because a coral reef that is mature and spectacular today, may be smashed by a cyclone tomorrow.

Just beyond the sheltered side of Ribbon No. 10 is the dive site known as Goggle Gardens. The corals there are at 15 metres and were totally bleached white from March to October 2016. But they didn’t die. What I learnt at the Ribbons in January is that white and bleached coral is not necessarily dead coral.

The zooxanthellae — unicellular algae that give coral its colours and normally feeds it with energy from the sun via photosynthesis — were expelled in early 2016 as these corals bleached, as the corals were stressed by the exceptionally warm waters during the summer of 2015 – 2016. But by January 2020, when we visited, these corals had fully recovered.

Many of the media headlines that give the impression the Great Barrier Reef is a ruin are based on aerial surveys by one man – the same Terry Hughes who incorrectly claimed the inshore reefs off-Bowen are now mud-flat. Paid not by an oil company, but rather the long suffering Australian taxpayer through generous research grants, he gets to sit in a light aircraft and fly over the Ribbons at about 300 metres altitude every four years and determine they are badly bleached. Back in 2016, he claimed 60 percent bleached, and the impression from the newspaper headlines that ricocheted around the world was that this was irretrievable, that the Great Barrier Reef was ruined.

Hughes is a myth maker. The Great Barrier Reef is still beautiful and the Ribbons on its most northeast edge are still of colourful corals and curious fish.

I went to the Ribbons because I was told these had been badly bleached. I went in search of death, but instead we found so much life as I explain in my second short film, the official preview to what will be ‘Clowns on the Ribbon’s Edge’.

My work is funded through philanthropy. I am grateful for the continued support of the B. Macfie Family Foundation through the Institute of Public Affairs. We do not rely on the long-suffering Australian tax payer for any of our research.

It has always been the case that the individual is expected to conform, and that there is hierarchy within myths.

Myths are of course traditional stories, often explaining a natural phenomenon typically involving supernatural beings or events. Of course, most people, most of the time, are so immersed (and kept so busy) within the established hierarchy and the myth, that they see it as their only reality. But it may not actually work for them (it could even be making them unhappy) especially if they want to be adventurous, and if they want to know the truth and be successful.

This is especially the case if they want to profit from the environment because at this point in our history anyone who interacts in a robust way with the natural environment, for example a farmer or fisherman, is likely to be immediately portrayed as harming the natural environment. Never mind that fundamental to our existence is food, that it still all comes from nature – whether farmed or hunted or gathered.

The Great Barrier Reef is a case in point. At the top of the established hierarchy are the scientists. They are telling us all that the reef is under so much stress from rising ocean temperatures, catastrophic cyclones and declining water quality and its our fault. Rising ocean temperatures have apparently caused the destruction of so many reefs especially through coral bleaching, which is when the corals expel their symbiotic zooxanthellae and become a stark white colour.

Because the scientists are at the top of the hierarchy, whatever they say tends to be parroted by others. Yet it makes no sense to undertake aerial surveys at 300 metres altitude from a plane window as a way of assessing the health of coral reefs that are growing vertically down cliff faces. Yet this is what they do: how the most widely reported assessments of reef health are conducted.

Scuba divers, and dive operators, record and log water temperatures and they go under-the-waves including over vertical edges and under dark ledges where so many colourful corals can be found. So, Scuba divers have firsthand experience of water temperatures and the state of the corals. What few realise, is that many of dive operators are also dependent on established hierarchies for their permits to operate, to visit the marine parks where the best corals grow.

When those with first hand experience turn-off their televisions and stop and think, they mostly know it to be a lie that ocean temperatures are rising catastrophically, and that the corals in the marine parks are in decline. Their experience is otherwise.

If there is any statistic that gives me cause to worry it is shark numbers. It is well documented that hundreds of sharks are killed each year in nets and on drumlines all along the Queensland coast. Scuba divers who have spent whole careers under-the-sea, including Val Taylor, write that the sharks are not coming back – that numbers are not what they used to be even in the most protected green zones within the marine parks.

In the end, if we really care about nature (the sharks and the corals) there needs to be much less hierarchy, and much more discussion between divers, fishers, farmers and scientists about the real issues that need addressing, and with all the evidence admitted.

At present there is a tendency for contrary evidence to be expelled like zooxanthellae from bleached reefs.

Except, that while most of the corals that expelled their zooxanthellae back in April 2016 have taken it all back and recovered – the situation within key Great Barrier Reef research institutions is to permanently expel contrary evidence and squash any, and everyone, who refuses to parrot their extraordinary claims.

What is not realised by most, is that just as the institutions expel wayward scientists, they also have the power to take away the licences of dive operators – such are the current hierarchies.

****

The white-tipped reef shark at the top of this blog post was taken at the Vertical Gardens Dive Site in January 2020. To know when the cinematography that captures all of this is released as a first short film consider subscribing for my irregular email newsletter here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/subscribe/ .

On 2 May 2018, Professor Peter Ridd was sacked by James Cook University for serious misconduct. It all started when he called-out his colleague Terry Hughes for falsely claiming healthy inshore coral reefs were dead from climate change and deteriorating water quality.

Ignoring the first censure in April 2016, Professor Ridd went on television in August 2017 and explained in an interview with Alan Jones and Peta Credlin why so much said and written about the Great Barrier Reef, including by scientists at the Australian Institution of Marine Science, is ‘untrustworthy’.

The interview was to promote a book that I edited, Climate Change: The Facts 2017. The book published by the Institute of Public Affairs, begins with a chapter about the Great Barrier Reef in which the orthodoxy on Great Barrier Reef science is challenged, in particular reporting on coral calcification rates. In that interview – that contributed directly to Peter Ridd’s sacking – the main argument was, and continues to be, for better quality assurance of coral reef science.

It is a fact that the Australian Institute of Marine Science refuses to release 15 years of coral growth data – because it contradicts the claims of high-profile activists that coral growth rates are in decline. They are not. But the false claims are central to their fundraising strategy. Never mind the truth.

The first finding handed down by Judge Salvatore Vasta back in April last year case concerned the photographs taken in 1994 that Terry Hughes used to falsely claim Acropora corals that were alive in 1890 are now all dead. Peter Ridd had photographs taken in 2015 showing live Acropora and the need for quality assurance of Hughes’ claims.

Judge Vasta found in favour of Peter Ridd and ordered that the 17 findings made by the University, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction, the censure and the final censure given by the University and the termination of employment of Professor Ridd by the University were all unlawful.

It was very significant that Peter Ridd won on the issue of academic freedom: that he did have a right to ignore the university administrators and continuing to speak out about the lack of quality assurance and explain how and why important scientific institutions had become so untrustworthy.

The University never accepted that decision by the Federal Circuit Court, and they have never conceded that Terry Hughes was wrong to suggest all the corals were dead, when a documentary has since been made showing them to be alive. Further, they have never supported any calls for the coral growth data to be made public.

Instead, the University appealed, and today the University won in the Federal Court. In the judgement, Peter Ridd’s academic freedom is portrayed as his ‘personal opinion’.

It is not Peter Ridd’s personal opinion that the corals are alive, and the Great Barrier Reef resilient to climate change. It is fact. I’ve seen the coral reefs whose health is contested with my own eyes: they are very much alive.

What is dead is academic freedom in Australia.

Universities should be understood by the judiciary as different from other workplaces because it is expected by the ordinary Australian that, on occasions, there will be vigorous debates on important and controversial issues. It is essential that academics can engage in these debates without fearing that the use of plain and colloquial English could end their careers.

Yet today, the university’s appeal was upheld on the basis Peter Ridd was un-collegial in stating plainly that his own university and the Australian Institute of Marine Science are ‘untrustworthy’ because of systemic deficiencies in their quality assurance processes. Further, it was mentioned that Peter Ridd did ‘satirise’ the university’s disciplinary processes in a personal email.

Today’s decision means that James Cook University, and other Australian universities, will continue to crush dissent and sack academics who campaign for the truth.

The truth is that coral reefs are resilient, and despite the fear mongering, refuse to die.

Australia’s universities may now be corporatist bureaucracies that rigidly enforce an unquestioning orthodoxy but it is the case that one day, when the travel restrictions are all lifted, you will be able to visit the Great Barrier Reef and see with your own eyes that Peter Ridd told the truth about the Stone Island corals, while Terry Hughes’ photographs deceive.

****
The feature image at the very top of this blog post is of Premnas biaculeatus, an anemone fish, photographed at a Ribbon reef on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef in January 2020. There are still so many fish, and so much healthy coral where Terry Hughes has most recently claimed devastating coral bleaching. I SCUBA dived for a week and could find very limited coral bleaching. The underwater footage from this expedition will be made into a feature length documentary.

The decision by the full bench of the Federal Court of Australia is here: https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/full/2020/2020fcafc0123

Please support The Spectator, a publication that continues to republish important information from this blog: https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/07/peter-ridd-loses-we-all-lose/

Exactly one year ago yesterday, I was getting off a train in Proserpine, looking to pickup a hire car to drive to Bowen. I wanted to know if the coral there was all dead, or not. Bowen is a coastal town in North Queensland, not far from Abbott Point that is the coal terminal for the controversial Adani coal mine.

Judge Salvador Vasta had earlier that week handed down his findings regarding the sacking of Peter Ridd. He had exonerated Ridd and explained that James Cook University had wrongly sacked him.

Some claim that it all came to a sorry end for Ridd because he dared to question the consensus of scientific opinion concerning the health of the Great Barrier Reef – particularly the impact of global warming. The university claimed it was because he had become ‘un-collegial’ and did not follow various directives while disclosing confidential information.

These issues were argued in the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane a month earlier, in March 2019. Very few people realized that at the heart of the case were a couple of what might be best described as fake-news photographs promoted by Terry Hughes.

This is the same Terry Hughes who is now claiming that 60%* of the Great Barrier Reef has been bleached, and that this is an extraordinary catastrophe for which we should all be ashamed.

If Peter Ridd had become un-collegial and disclosed confidential information, it was because he was fed-up with the fake news. As Ridd wrote in chapter 1 of the book that I edited three years ago, a chapter entitled ‘The Extraordinary Resilience of Great Barrier Reef Corals, and Problems with Policy Science’:

I have carried out half-a-dozen audits on some of the science claiming damage to the Great Barrier Reef, and in every case I have discovered serious problems.

The first of the 21 findings handed down in the Federal Court by Judge Vasta one year ago, concerned photographs used by Terry Hughes to claim that the corals off Bowen had been variously destroyed by global warming, ocean acidification and sediment run-off. Hughes claimed where there had once been healthy coral reef, there was now only mudflat.

The most recent claims from Hughes, that all of the Great Barrier Reef is at risk from global warming, do not follow close-up examination of individual corals or even individual reefs. Rather Hughes has flown in a light plane in all sorts of conditions through the day even when it was windy, and looked down from a very high altitude, from some hundreds of metres away.

His claims are being uncritically reported as fact across the world, including in popular scientific magazines.

I’ve flown a drone at 30 metres above a coral reef and spotted white corals. I’ve snorkelled that same reef and found the same white corals to be very much alive and with zooxanthellae. I made a film of this adventure, documenting its health for that moment in time. That was in August 2019. I named that reef and the film: Beige Reef. You can see the white corals from the drone footage at 9.38, 10.35 and 11.07 minutes.

Beige reef fringes the north facing bay at Stone Island, which is across the channel from Bramston Reef at the entrance to Bowen Harbour.

The white corals were large; they are commonly known as bolder corals, and the species at Beige Reef was Galaxea fascicularis. I made this identification based on information in J.E.N. Vernon’s three-part encyclopedia ‘Corals of the Worlds’ using my close-up photographs of the extended tentacles. These were taken on the same day that I took the drone footage showing these same corals as white in the film Beige Reef.

If we go back eight years, to July 2012, it is a fact that Terry Hughes stood in front of 2,500 marine scientists at an international conference in Cairns and claimed the corals off-Bowen are dead. That claim, made while showing a picture of the mudflat at Bramston Reef just to the south of Bowen, was a front-page story the next day in The Cairns Post.

Peter Ridd had some photographs taken in 2015 showing healthy corals off-Bowen, he got sacked for this effort. To back-up Terry Hughes, Tara Clark from the University of Queensland and colleagues (including David Wachenfeld from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority), had a paper published by the prestigious journal Nature claiming that there are no-longer any Acropora spp. corals at Stone Island. In the film Beige Reef, I show 25 hectares of this coral type. I made Beige Reef to back-up Peter Ridd.

I don’t know of a single journalist prepared to visit Bowen, Bramston Reef, Beige Reef or Stone Island to check the veracity of the claims by me and Peter Ridd versus Terry Hughes or Tara Clark. Yet it is not complicated, though it will be political. The saga has been on-going since at least 2015.

Jennifer Marohasy: come visit the reef with me, Misha Ketchell

Exactly one year ago, keen to see for myself I walked across that mudflat at low tide, after catching the train to Proserpine and then driving up to Bowen. I walked across the mudflat on the afternoon of Easter Friday in April 2019, and kept going for about 1 kilometre. I found so much live coral, the other side of that mudflat.

I returned to Bowen four months later in August 2019 with skipper Rob McCulloch, marine biologist Walter Starck, and an underwater photographer.

Having the boat that McCulloch towed down from Cairns made it possible for us to get all around Stone Island. As it turned-out we found several coral reefs fringing Stone Island, including Beige Reef with all the Acropora spp.. To be clear, there is not just coral the other side of the mudflat at Bramston reef, but all-around Stone Island that is just across the channel from Bramston Reef.

Surely it’s time journalists and their editors took some responsibility for the information that they republish? It seems they take anything provided by particular academics that fit a narrative, and give it a free run.

So far, Hughes has not published this most recent aerial survey in any peer-reviewed journal, or even made available a list of the locations with bleached corals. No doubt he will in due course. Then we will probably see a second wave of uncritical reporting by the mainstream media, again claiming the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef. The bottom-line seems to be that we live at a time when the dominant narrative demands an ecological disaster. It is as though almost anything that can be imagined, and told as a story by academics, can become a news headline. There is no checking.

I can only ask that ordinary folk be ever sceptical of such stories. Scepticism should be worn as a badge of honour, particularly in these times when it can be so hard to know whether there really is a coral catastrophe, or not. How can we find the truth, when even Nature publishes incorrect reports: claiming there are no Acropora spp. corals at Stone Island where I found and filmed 25 hectares on 27 August 2019.

***

Postscript:

Quoting from an ABC News story:
Great Barrier Reef found to be coral bleached from north to south for first time
By national science and technology reporter Michael Slezak and the specialist reporting team’s Penny Timms
Updated Tue at 9:52am

“The Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing the most widespread bleaching ever recorded, with 60 per cent of reefs across all three regions affected, according to a detailed survey of the system.

Key points:

1. Warmer sea temperatures have led to coral bleaching along the length of the Great Barrier Reef

2. More coral reefs were bleached in 2016, although the damage was concentrated in the north

3. Marine biologist Terry Hughes says the reef is rapidly adapting to climate change

It is the third mass bleaching event on the reef in five years — a phenomenon primarily caused by greenhouse gas emissions, and one that had never been recorded before 1997.

“We were hoping that this year would be a relatively mild bleaching event, but unfortunately that’s not the case,” said Professor Terry Hughes, head of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-07/great-barrier-reef-most-widespread-coral-bleaching-on-record/12107054
______

The image at the very top of this blog post is of Matt and me on Easter Monday 2019, heading out to Middle Island from Bowen Marina. Much thanks to John Barnes for organising this adventure, and for taking the photograph.