Great Barrier Reef

THE idea that the Great Barrier Reef is in need of saving from catastrophe is popular, especially among academics and politicians. In 2003, I published an article in the IPA Review entitled ‘Deceit in the Name of Conservation’ concerning the then Queensland Premier and Chief Scientist. In an earlier article entitled ‘WWF says Jump, Governments ask How High’ I explained the extent to which there was collusion within members of a Reef Protection Taskforce, that including activists and the CSIRO, to the extent that they felt a need to invent evidence of damage to the reef — least none existed.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull approved a $443 million grant to the tiny Great Barrier Reef Foundation. That grant includes an allowance of up to $86 million for ‘administration’.

Those with a belief in the general competence of government and academics might assume that there are some big questions reef scientists have prioritized and are in the process of answering through their reef research. But. It is perhaps more a case of individual researchers confirming the end is nigh in accordance with the consensus, while denying Nemo, his corals and the crystal-clear blue waters that is the reality at 319 percent of this deep nature … that is for those who still put their heads under the water without drowning from a ladder while entangled in a fishing net.

The Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) passed a resolution at its conference on the weekend to establish an ‘Office of Science Quality Assurance’ to check the science that is being used for policy decisions — with the push for the creation of this office coming from those now very concerned about yet more regulation that could mean the end of the sugar industry as a proposed solution to saving the reef from ruin.

In bureaucratic speak such an ‘office’ could mean almost anything, but usually an ‘office’ is just a branch of a government department. Somewhat like a polp within a corallite that is anchored to the colony for better or worst as sea levels fall.

This ‘Office of Science Quality Assurance’ may pride itself on its independent advice.  For example, Finance and Treasury sometimes give independent advice which may conflict with what the Cabinet and the Government wants to do.  Such advice is usually ignored.  This is the reason there are Cabinet-in-Confidence laws: to prevent publication of such internal discussions and possibly differing views. 

There have already been commissions set up by government specifically to investigate corruption within institutions and organisations — even universities that undertake reef research in Queensland.

In facts claims of the need for quality assurance, could be a euphemism for ‘the scientists are taking the money and just making-stuff-up’.

Presently each Australian state has an anti-corruption commission. In Queensland there is the Crime and Corruption Commission (QCCC). The core function of this office is to investigate such allegations.

Indeed this branch of the Queensland government — with the grand title ‘Commission’—has far reaching powers to compel testimony and examine evidence. The QCCC actually receives thousands of complaints each year concerning misconduct by politicians, government officers even scientists — but finds time to investigate less than 5 percent of what is lodged by the tax-payers who funds this office/commission, as well as all the reef research.

The other 95 percent of the complaints lodged annually at the QCCC are referred straight back to the organisation against which the complaint has been lodged!

So, if you as a citizen of Queensland lodge a complaint against the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, for example, chances are that you will have your complaint investigated by — the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

I know of a complaint of corrupt conduct lodged against a Queensland university (not James Cook University) by a former staff member in about 2016 that was immediately referred back to that same Queensland university. Despite all the evidence meticulously complied by the well-qualified former staff member concerning their misconduct, that university’s management determined that it simply did not have a case to answer.

Concerned that his detailed allegations had ended-up back with her university management that wouldn’t let him back on the ladder, the former staff member made a ‘Right to Information Request’ to the QCCC. He wanted to know how often this was the course of action, and how effective such an approach might be — essentially asking the vixens to inspect the chickens, dead and alive.

The QCCC responded that there was no relevant documentation at all. To be clear the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission has never undertaken an assessment of the effectiveness of their complaints referral process. Yet this is where 95 percent. of the complaints from Queensland citizens reside.

This same commission, set up by government to provide some oversight of government, including government science at universities, has an annual budget of more than $60 million.

The Royal Commission into misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services found these non-government organisations also had oversight committees, and the committees were often aware of serious misconduct and possible criminal behaviour impacting on customers. Yet they mostly failed to do anything about it: they failed to properly self regulate.

Previously, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia uncovered that senior church officials were aware of sometimes hundreds of individual cases of abuse, yet their response though internal investigation was denial extending over the decades as victims suicided.

So, why would the LNP — currently the opposition government in Queensland — think that an ‘Office of Science Quality Assurance’ within a government department or other, will be able to make a difference to research research – or the plight of sugarcane growers who happen to farm next to the Great Barrier Reef?

Investigation into the veracity and quality of Great Barrier Reef scientific findings, is going to be infinitely more difficult than an investigation into a transaction between the Commonwealth Bank and yet another customer looking for some help with their superannuation.

Research institutions across Australia, including the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the ARC Centre for Excellence and the Australian Institute of Marine Science are now as conformist and corporatist as banks — while almost totally dependent on government funding but under no obligation to archive their data.

The idea that these government-institutions run by bureaucrats (each on a ladder) will do anything except ensure such an ‘Office of Science Quality Assurance’ endorses the research that they manage, while squashing dissent, is so naive as to be dangerous.

The term Fourth Estate is sometimes used with reference to the mainstream media, suggesting they are as important as the three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial for the correct functioning of a democracy. But we know they are as wedded to the idea the Great Barrier Reef is ruin, as Barrack Obama who, also, has never visited it.

There is a need for a revolution: for individuals within governments to become accountable again, for individual scientists to interest themselves in matters of truth, and for individual journalists to take an interest in their evidence.

Instead we increasingly persist in a society where legitimacy resides only with those embedded in such institutions that are increasingly conformist and corporatist — intent on limiting the potential of the individual particularly the individual who dissents. Through constant negotiations — mostly behind closed doors — the special interests of reef research charities and renewable energy advocates, alike, are growing.

Regulation and oversight of government by government does not work anymore — if it ever did.

The best response to the current corruption so obviously now embedded in Great Barrier Reef research would be for the LNP to pass a motion to severely restrict tax payer funding to those so animated by the prospect of reef ruin.

This could potentially limit the waste, and deceit — and who really would miss them? Only politicians who must save things, and journalists too lazy to find real stories — and to check if there really is coral beyond that mud flat to the immediate south of Bowen.

The corporatist culture that increasingly rules Queensland means an ‘Office of Science Quality Assurance’ within any branch of this state government, as proposed by the LNP on the weekend, will only inevitably end-up another brick in the wall against creativity, innovation and independent thought … all so important for the progress of science.

Indeed, all our science is primitive and childlike when measured against the reality of the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef — that has existed for 10,000 years despite floods, droughts and climate change.

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The feature image is by The National Archives UK – Animal Farm artwork, No restrictions.

I’VE been asked to speak this coming Sunday at the Maroochydore Surf Club (36 Alexander Parade, Sunshine Coast) about climate change at the Great Barrier Reef, and to provide both a local and global perspective.

It is sometimes said that “all politics is local”, but this is hardly the case with climate change: it has become such a political issue and usually the focus is global. This global focus, and particularly the focus on carbon dioxide as a driver of climate change, has confused understanding of some really basic phenomena — phenomena that are both predictable and natural.

It was entirely predictable that with the extreme El Niño of 2015/2016 there would be more coral bleaching than usual due to the falling sea levels, and perhaps also higher temperatures.

Yes, that is correct, falling sea levels.

If we consider mean monthly sea levels at Darwin (as recorded by the
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level based in the UK) they were exceptionally low in 1997/1998 and then again in 2015/2016, as shown in Figure 1. There were falling sea levels across the western Pacific.

Indeed an El Niño is a climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean with a global impact on weather patterns that begins when warm water in the western tropical Pacific Ocean shifts eastward along the equator toward the coast of South America.

Corals usually grow-up to just below the lowest mean spring tide. Corals are particularly vulnerable to extremely low tides and in particular low tides in the middle of the day when there is also high solar radiation. The damage from such events may leave a characteristic tell-tale structure, for example, micro-atolls.

I have a picture of my mother (who migrated to Australia after WWII, see the picture featured at the top of this post) standing in front of a micro-atoll at Heron Island, where she worked as a waitress in the mid-1950s. I have another picture — I will show at the Maroochydore surf club on Sunday — showing the extent of the bleaching at Heron Island at that time.

This coral bleaching back in the 1950s, and much of the recent bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef, may have been due to falling sea levels, rather than extreme temperatures as I will explain on Sunday.

Of course, another determinant of sea level is the quantity of ice on Earth. This has varied significantly over geological time. Modern variations in ice and sea levels are negligible when compared with those from natural Ice Age cycles.

I will show some evidence of past cycles embedded in the local Sunshine Coast landscape, including when Maroochydore was underwater because of higher sea levels just 120,000 years ago.

Everyone is welcome at the Surf Club, but please book online. I will speak for about 1 hour … beginning at 2pm on Sunday 14th July on Level 3 which is the Conference Room, 36 Alexander Parade, Maroochydore. If you are coming please book online: https://www.trybooking.com/book/event?eid=520591

I hope to see you there.

THE First Finding handed down by Judge Salvador Vasta in the Peter Ridd court case concerned Bramston reef off Bowen and a photograph taken in 1994 that Terry Hughes from James Cook University has been claiming proves Acropora corals that were alive in 1890 are now all dead – the fringing reef reduced to mudflat.

Meanwhile, Peter Ridd from the same university, had photographs taken in 2015 showing live Acropora and the need for quality assurance of Hughes’ claims.

Both sides were preparing evidence for over a year – with the lawyers apparently pocketing in excess of one million dollars – yet there was no interest in an independent assessment of the state of Bramston reef.

It more than once crossed my mind, that with all the money floating around for reef research and lawyers … there could perhaps be some mapping, or just one transect, at this most contentious of locations supposedly indicative of the state of the Great Barrier Reef more generally.

In his judgment Judge Salvadore Vasta was left to simply conclude that it was unclear whether there was now mudflat or coral reef where an extensive area of Acropora coral had been photographed back in 1890, but that Peter Ridd nevertheless had the right to ask the question.

Indeed, the court case and the appeal which must be lodged by tomorrow (Tuesday 7th May), is apparently all about ‘academic freedom’ and ‘employment law’, while the average Australian would perhaps be more likely to care if they got to see some coral and some fish – dead or alive.

I visited Bramston Reef over Easter because I couldn’t wait any longer to know if the corals in Peter Ridd’s 2015 photographs had been smashed by Cyclone Debbie that hovered over Bowen two years later, in April 2017.

As I drove into Bowen, I took a detour towards Edgecombe Bay, but I didn’t stop and explore – because I saw the signage warning of crocodiles.

Peter Ridd had told me that his technicians had approached from the south south-east in a rubber dinghy to get their photographs. The day I arrived (April 18, 2019), and the next, there was a strong south south-easterly wind blowing, and no-one prepared to launch a boat to take me out.

On the afternoon of Easter Friday – ignoring the signage warning of crocodiles – I walked through the mangroves to the water’s edge. I found the mudflat which Terry Hughes had claimed now covers once healthy Acropora coral and walked across it. The other side of the mudflat there was reef flat with beds of healthy Halimeda. This area of reef flat over sand extended for nearly one kilometre – before it gave way to hectares of Acropora coral.

Professor Hughes had just not walked far enough.

When, with much excitement, I showed my photographs of all the Acropora to a Bowen local. He described them as, “rubbish corals”. He seemed ashamed that the corals I had photographed at Bramston reef were not colourful.

For a coral to make the front cover of National Geographic it does need to be exceptionally colourful. Indeed, for a woman model to make the cover of Vogue magazine she needs to be exceptionally thin. But neither thin, nor colourful, is necessarily healthy. Indeed, Acropora corals are generally tan or brown in colour when they have masses of zooxanthellae and are thus growing quickly – and are healthy.

White corals have no zooxanthellae and are often dead, because they have been exposed to temperatures that are too high. Colourful corals, like thin women, are more nutrient starved and often exist in environments of intense illumination – existing near the limits of what might be considered healthy.

Such basic facts are not well understood. Instead there is an obsession with saving the Great Barrier Reef from imminent catastrophe while we are either shown pictures of bleached white dead coral, or spectacularly colourful corals from outer reefs in nutrient-starved waters … while thousands of square kilometres of healthy brown coral is ignored.

Peter Ridd did win his high-profile court case for the right to suggest there is a need for some quality assurance of the research – but I can’t see anyone getting on with this. The Science Show on our National Broadcaster, hosted by a most acclaimed scientist journalist, has reported on the case just this last weekend. Rather than launching a dinghy and having a look at Bramston Reef, Robyn Williams has replayed part of a 2008 interview with Peter Ridd, and let it be concluded that because Peter Ridd holds a minority view he is likely wrong.

Understanding the real state of the Great Barrier Reef is not a trivial question: it has implications for tourism, and the allocation of billions of dollars of public monies … with most currently allocated to those properly networked – but not necessarily knowledgeable or prepared to walk beyond a mudflat to find the corals.

To be sure to know when I post pictures at this blog, and to get the latest news regarding the Peter Ridd court case including the possible appeal by James Cook University, subscribe for my irregular email updates.

WE have been led to believe that smashed coral is our fault – that when it is lying on the sea floor as untidy piles of grey it is because of catastrophic human-caused global warming. But just maybe coral bleaching and cyclones are natural, and not even increasing in extent.

I visited four reefs during my recent adventures off Bowen. One of these, the reef fringing Middle Island, has been very badly damaged by cyclone Debbie, which hovered over Bowen in April 2017.

Just two years later much of this reef is unattractive – but certainly not desolate.

After gearing-up I jumped over-board from The Skipper’s boat with my little red Olympus (TG-5) camera on Monday – and my new snorkelling buddy Matt.

Every time I stopped swimming, watched, and waited I saw something special swim past.

There were also large, colourful parrot fish. But I didn’t manage to capture them on this short video – my first attempt at underwater movie-making.

As I snorkeled sometimes the backdrop was broken coral. Other times I swam over meadows of algae. But I never had to swim far before seeing something special – like a mushroom or staghorn coral. They were often solitary: the very early stages of regeneration at an otherwise often ugly reef.

Occasionally I would stumble on an area of faster growing soft coral with sponges.

That the cyclone had smashed large Porites coral clear in half gives some idea of how powerful it was.

But even delicate black feather corals are coming back … one at a time.

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The first/feature photo is of me (Jennifer Marohasy) getting ready to jump in, with a view across to the north eastern edge of Middle Island, off Bowen, on 22 April 2019; photo credit John Barnes.

The first link embedded into this post is from the Bureau’s website suggesting a declining, certainly not increasing, trend in the incidence of cyclone. I’ve just downloaded this page and am archiving it here: TropicalCycloneTrends-20190424

Also, it should be noted, that the Bureau did overhype the category for Cyclone Marcia, as I detailed in an article for On Line Opinion, also archived here: CycloneMaricawasnotcategory5-Queenslanders . The Bureau were much more accurate when it came to reporting of Cyclone Debbie.

MOST people rarely venture into nature – they certainly don’t spend much time on coral reefs. When they do, they may expect the fish and corals to be as bright, colourful and perfect as the last nature documentary that they saw in full surround-sound on a wide screen.

Such images come from professional photographers staying underwater for hours, perhaps after having waited days for very calm weather, so the water is exceptionally clear. Of course, such photographs are enhanced by bright lighting, so most of the footage would be taken on very sunny days. Also, a great expanse of shallow water – gives depth to the footage, and the further off-shore generally the clearer the water.

The Great Barrier Reef is vast. If you click onto the webpage at this link you will find zoning maps that give an idea of how long and how wide – in fact the area is visible from outer space.

Scroll down and click on Map 9, and you will find a map showing so many reefs off Bowen.

Bowen has made headlines for some years now – it is the place where Terry Hughes and other leading academics claim the reef is totally dead, and that this is representative of the whole inshore Great Barrier Reef. They are so wrong.

There is so much coral here off Bowen, and there are so many extensive areas of coral reef, and most are a very long way off shore – making the visit to just one of the outer reefs a long day trip by fishing boat.

Because cyclones and coral bleaching are a regular occurrence, the exact state of the corals at particular reef is not always predictable and in constant flux. This has been the case for thousands of years.

The Great Barrier Reef has existed for about 10,000 years: when sea levels rose at the beginning of the current geological epoch known as the Holocene. Because the reefs have been growing up-wards for thousands of years – while sea levels have fallen over one metre in the last 5,000 years – they are very vulnerable to bleaching, particularly when there is calm weather on a very low tide leaving corals high and dry for long periods.

Nevertheless, it is possible to find so much healthy coral, even at Bowen … at Horseshoe Bay, which is just around the corner from Queens Bay that is shown in the far-left corner of Map 9.

I’ve been in Bowen for several days now … waiting for the strong south-southeasterly winds to ease so we can take the boat out to visit some off-shore islands. The Skipper did take me out late yesterday (when we had a few hours of calm) to see the coral the other side of Bramston reef – I’m meaning beyond the mud flat and reef flat that I walked last Friday on the very low tide.

It is so wrong for Terry Hughes to suggest that this reef has all been reduced to mud flat. That the coral off Bowen is all dead.

There is live coral, and lots of it, at depth at Bramston reef. I got lots of photographs from my cheap camera and just snorkelling (no tank) and I might post more in due course.

My preference would be to get a professional underwater photographer to take better photographs and as a movie so you can see the full extent of this ancient reef.

Late yesterday some of Bramston reef looked so eerie – then again it is about 4,500 years old.

Someone needs to go down with a good camera and a tank of oxygen and get extensive footage that shows the great diversity, and all the fish – there might even be a crocodile hiding somewhere.

Parts of Bramston reef have been reduced to rubble, some from Cyclone Debbie that hovered over Bowen just two years ago. But there is also new coral, and extensive areas of healthy and live corals at this ancient reef.

I’m hoping to see another ancient reef off Bowen this afternoon … perhaps the Skipper and Matt will take me to Middle Island.

In the meantime, subscribe at my blog, so you are sure to be one of the first to find out when, and if, I can find a professional underwater photographer to show you ancient Bramston reef, including the crocodile.

If you are impatient and overseas, just jump on a plane and then bus or train it to Bowen. Nicole Kidman has even been here, but she thought Bowen was Darwin. Don’t believe Hollywood, the academics or doomsayers (the Elites can be so lame) – there is so much more than mudflats and cowboys at Bowen.

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The feature image is of me, and very happy, because I had just been snorkeling at Horseshoe Bay (Bowen) – and there are so many pretty corals, and I saw a sting ray.

The coral reef off Bowen, in North Queensland, is only dead to the 2,500 marine scientists who attended the conference in Cairns on 9th July 2012. That day, they were shown photographs of a mudflat … and told that mud now covers what was once healthy coral reef, and that this reef off Bowen is an example of the “sad decline” of the Great Barrier Reef.

The photographs shown by Terry Hughes on that day were misleading.

There is still a lot of coral off Bowen. At Bramston Reef it is more than one kilometre off shore, beyond the mudflat, and beyond the reef flat – both of which are teeming with life.

This is the littoral zone: the area between the highest and lowest tides once of so much interest to biologists. But like so much of our natural history it is being denied by the doomsayers and activists who now manage the narrative and seem completely averse to a bit of mud. They seem to expect the entire shoreline to be covered in bright corals with Nemo swimming around, but this was never the case.

Yesterday, on the very lowest tide of this month, I walked across an expanse of mudflat and then sandy reef flat before finding myself blocked by Acropora coral, which would normally be underwater. I could see massive Porites just out of the water in the distance. But the tide was turning, and so I headed back.

I took photographs along the way of the many creatures that inhabit this littoral zone – that is not all covered in mud, but some of it is and that is not bad.

For years, photographs of just the mud flat with a view across to Gloucester Island (with Stone Island to the left in the foreground, of the next video), have been paraded as evidence of “devastated coral reefs” – including by Terry Hughes at that conference.

The photographs are just of the naturally muddy, what some would call “back reef”. Beyond that is an area of perhaps 900 metres dominated by coarse carbonate sands, and beyond that corals for perhaps 800 metres to the seafloor. Yesterday I walked across the mud flat and reef flat to the corals.

The most high-profile Great Barrier Reef researchers have denied the existence of the reef flat and then the corals at Bramston reef, which they variously confuse with the fringing reef at Stone Island. It is a shame. It suggests a high level of incompetence.

Bramston reef was probably at its most expansive and spectacular about 4,500 years ago when sea levels were about 1.5 metres higher (yes, higher). That was during the Holocene high stand.

Back then there would have been rapid vertical growth of the reef. By 3,000 years before the present, the reef was probably backfilling with the sea-level fall creating fossil microatolls.

That there is limited potential for vertical growth at present, has everything to do with the lack of sea level rise. Sea levels did come up over 100 meters between about 16,000 and 10,000 years ago! The climate is always changing. Indeed climate change began long before the industrial revolution.

It is confusing to me that while sea level fall is an un-controversial fact in the technical literature, there is so much concern about the perhaps 36 cm rise since about 1880 along the Queensland coast. Indeed, what is written in the newspapers is impossible to reconcile with what is in the technical, scientific literature. This is often the case with climate issues.

At Bramston reef the difference between high and low tide at this time of year is more than three metres. There will be much more coral exposed in August, when we get the very lowest tides for this part of the Earth for this year – and I’m planning to return then, to get more photographs, including of the corals.

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The feature image (very first photograph, at top) is of a young Porites coral growing around mud on the reef flat taken by Jennifer Marohasy on 19th April 2019.