The Great Barrier Reef: a Beautiful Part of The World

Introduction

When people think Australia, several images and feelings come about: kangaroos, beaches, sunshine, natural and exotic landscapes and scenery, the Outback and more. One of these images most people think of when they hear about Australia is the Great Barrier Reef. Considered to be the world’s largest reef system, the Great Barrier Reef is a exotic, unique and precious natural wonder of the world. As one of the seven natural wonders of the world, it is unique in the fact that it thrives and flourishes in a wide and exotic spectrum of housing hundreds, nearly thousands of plant and animals species. Practically the entire ecosystem was inscribed as a World Heritage in 1981, it contains a large set of eco-systematic communities for plant, animals, microorganisms and other living marine creatures. It is a beautiful, natural attraction that brings thousands to its shores and waters. It thrives, yet has concerns for its future as it deals with local and global issues of pollution, coral bleaching and destruction from toxins. This paper will depict the biography of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as a natural landmark, tourist attraction and it’s past and current statuses as well as talk about issues that faces today.

Geography and Geology

Located in the Coral Sea off the northeast coast of Australia's state of Queensland, the reef itself stretches 1,600 miles (2,600 km) and most of it is between 9 and 93 miles (15 and 50 km). The width of the coral varies, with highest width levels to be measured up to 40 miles (65km) wide. In geographic terms, the GBR stretches from Torres Strait in the north to the area between Lady Elliot and Fraser Islands in the south. Much of the GBR is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The park itself covers over 1,800 miles (3,000 km) of the reef and runs along Queensland's coast near the town of Bundaberg. Much thanks to this park has to be given, for it has been an aid in protecting, promoting and nourishing much of the coral and life species found in the Great Barrier Reef (UNESCO, 2016).

The Great Barrier Reef has a fascinating but long and complex history when it comes to its geologic formation. Coral reefs began forming in the region about between 58 and 48 million years ago when the Coral Sea Basin formed. The Plate tectonic theory indicates Australia has moved northwards at a rate of 7 cm (2.8 in) per year, starting during the Cenozoic. Eastern Australia experienced a period of tectonic uplift, which moved the drainage divide in Queensland 400 km (250 mi) inland. Also during this time, Queensland experienced volcanic eruptions leading to central and shield volcanoes and basalt flows. Some of these became high islands. After the Coral Sea Basin formed, coral reefs began to grow in the Basin, but until about 25 million years ago, northern Queensland was still in temperate waters south of the tropics—too cool to support coral growth. After Queensland drifted into tropical waters, it was largely influenced by reef growth and decline as sea level changed. However, once the Australian continent moved to its present location, sea levels began to change and coral reefs started to grow quickly, but changing climate and sea levels after that caused them to grow and decline in cycles. This is because coral reefs need certain sea temperatures and levels of sunlight to grow. Today, scientists believe that complete coral reef structures where today's Great Barrier Reef is were formed 600,000 years ago. This reef died off however due to climate change and changing sea levels. Today's reef began to form about 20,000 years ago when it started growth on the remains of the older reef. This due to the fact that the Last Glacial Maximum ended around this time and during glaciation sea level was much lower than it is today. Following the end of the last glaciation about 20,000 years ago, sea level continued to rise and as it got higher, the coral reefs grew on the hills being flooded on the coastal plain. 13,000 years ago sea level was almost where it is today and the reefs began to grow around off the coast of Australia islands. As these islands became further submerged with rising sea levels, the coral reefs grew over them to form the reef system present today. The current Great Barrier Reef structure is about 6,000 to 8,000 years old.

History: Discovery and Human Interaction

Since the Great Barrier Reef is a natural-made attraction that covers a large area, it is an extremely ancient, enormous host of living things, composed of living coral growing on dead coral dating back perhaps as much as twenty million years. Formation of the reef occurred over many generations of dead coral having built themselves into great walls of stone covered in a diverse range of living organisms such as coral, algae, anemones, sponges, fish, worms, starfish, turtles, molluscs, snakes, crustaceans, and an extraordinary array of thousands of species of plants and animals. There is no direct physical evidence, first human contact with the reef must’ve occupied great parts of the Australian continent for about 40,000 years. Indigenous peoples such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander have fished and hunted its waters and navigated between the islands of the reef region (Coles, 2015). Also taken into consideration, for a large part of that ancient historic time, during periods of glacial activity, the area of the Great Barrier Reef was dry with large flats coastal plains. This area measures at a depth of less than one hundred meters below sea level today.

However, more recorded and accurate historical accounts of human contact with the GBR after early Europeans sailed across the Pacific Ocean, making land contact with the eastern coast of Australia. It is believed that the Queensland coast was first sighted around 1522 by a Portuguese expedition led by Cristovao de Mendonca. However the earliest documentary evidence of Europeans sighting the Great Barrier Reef was French commander Louis de Bougainville. He discovered one area of the reef now known as Bougainville Reef near Cooktown. However, confronted by rough surf in the open ocean and shortage of food, he turned his ship and crew north toward Asia along the north coast of New Guinea, missing Australia. This became somewhat of a pattern between other voyageurs and explorers, touching the reef but missing the Australian current.

It wasn't’ until 1770 that the Endeavour under James Cook sailed the length of the Great Barrier Reef. Most of the voyage was made well inshore, probably seeing little of the Reef. However on 11 June, Cook’s party became intimately acquainted with it when they struck Endeavour Reef, north of Cape Tribulation, being forced to spend six weeks repairing the ship on shore at the site of modern Cooktown. It was this unexpected and inconvenient predicament that Cook and his scientists, botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander and a staff of four illustrators, were able to carry out very little direct observation of the Reef but as a result of the voyage and crash, this was the first documented scientific discovery for the international scientific community. It was a great discovery that soon affected the GBF and its future interaction with humans. Fixes were made to the ship, but due to the structure of the GBF, it served as a natural barrier, making it difficult for Cook and the ship to make for open sea. This forced them to travel north to Lizard Island. Cook and his botanists went to the island and climbed the highest point to find the break in the reef large enough to permit the passage of the Endeavor. This pass is known today as Cook’s Passage.

Through the years 1801 to 1803, scientist and geographer Matthew Flinders untook the monumental task of surveying the entire Australian coastline and at one point actually walked on what he called the “Extensive Barrier Reefs”. It was Finders who charted a safe passage through by sending small boats of ahead to sound the depths. Hydrographer Philip Parker King, commanding the Mermaid in 1819 and the Bathurst in 1820, carrie on the methodical task of accurately charting much of the northern Reef in detail for the first time. Through these next two and a half centuries, Europeans began to colonize and commute to the eastern lands of Australia, mostly along the coasts of now Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria provinces. Today studies are carried out at a much closer level, examining the makeup of the reef, what species there are, how they lie and interact, whether they are resilient or vulnerable to change. These studies and research done by scientists of various fields (botanists, hydro-geographers, environmentalists, oceanographers, marine biologists, etc) have visited from all parts of the academic world in efforts to understand the GBF’s unique, ancient but delicate ecosystems--all thanks to James Cook’s team of botanists and their documentation of the spectacular Reef.

Biodiversity

The beautiful Great Barrier reef is home to unique and spectacular species of life. The variety of life along the Reef's vast expanse is immense. The Reef's extraordinary biodiversity and the interconnectedness of species and habitats make the Great Barrier Reef and surrounding areas one of the most complex natural systems on Earth.

Maintaining a healthy and diverse Great Barrier Reef ecosystem is important so it is better able to withstand, recover and adapt to impacts and stress. A productive and healthy Reef environment provides essential resources such as fish and prawns and supports many industries. It is the world's largest coral reef ecosystem, extending over 14 degrees of latitudinal range. It includes more than 2900 separate coral reefs and deep water features of the adjoining continental shelf including canyons, channels, plateaux and slopes is made up of 70 'bioregions' (broadscale habitats) comprising 30 reef bioregions and 40 non-reef bioregions (Rizzari, 2014). The GBR has more than 2000 square kilometres of mangroves, with species representing 54 per cent of the world's mangrove diversity. While the GBR has about 6000 square kilometres of seagrass beds, it also includes about 1050 islands ranging from small coral cays to large continental islands.

In addition a wide array of animals rely on the Reef, including one of the world's most important dugong populations and six of the world's seven species of marine turtle. Some 1625 species of fish swim among more than 450 species of hard coral (Rizzari, 2014). Lesser known species like molluscs, sponges, marine algae, soft coral and sea pens are just some of the many that call the Great Barrier Reef home.

Visitation to the Great Barrier Reef

Visitation to the entire Great Barrier Reef Marine Park for the year ending December 2014 was approximately 2.19 million visitor days. (GGBRMPA, 2015). This figure includes standalone coral viewing activities and scenic flights. The long-term trend of tourism in the Marine Park does not include standalone coral viewing activities and scenic flights as this data has only been collected in recent years. For the year ending December 2014, visitation to the Marine Park, not including these activities, was 1.88 million visitor days. Visitation fluctuates depending on tourism trends, weather and even global factors. Information on the number of tourists visiting the Marine Park has been compiled from logbook data that tourism operators are required to provide when submitting their environmental management charge (EMC) returns (GBRMPA, 2015).

Information provided by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the following graph shows visitation to the entire Great Barrier Reef Marine Park including full day visits, part day visits and visits by those who are exempt from paying the Environment Management Charge (EMC). Full day visits are the best gauge of the general trend of tourism in the Marine Park. The data is displayed by calendar years and does not include coral viewing activities or scenic flights. This graph shows the measure of visitors over a span of 20 years (Davey, 2016).

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority points out the factors on understanding that the chart above graphs the the concepts that Full day visits include: A day trip of more than three hours is recorded as a full day visit, overnight trips are recorded as multiple full days, for example, a stay of two-days and one night is counted as two full day visits. Part day visits include: Where the trip is less than three hours, the first day of a trip entering the Marine Park after 5 pm and the last day of a trip leaving the Marine Park before 6 am. Exempt visits are passengers who are not required to pay the Environmental Management Charge (EMC), for example: Young children who are free-of-charge, trade familiarisation passengers who are free-of-charge, and/or passengers for whom another operator has already paid EMC on that day. Other details about tourists and visitors that the GBR sees is that approximately 40 percent of the 1.6 million visitors are from overseas, with the percentage as high as 70 percent in Cairns. Many are repeat visitors who, research shows, tend to opt for smaller rather than large vessels for subsequent trips. The most foreign tourists that visit the GBR the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. (Australia.Gov.Au, 2016).

Technology, combined with a rapid worldwide rise in interest in recreational travel, transformed reef tourism in the later 1970's and 80's. The first large, high speed catamaran carrying 150 people at over 25 knots - and thus to previously inaccessible reefs - were introduced in 1982 (Davey, 2016). Snorkelling gear, and then Scuba gear, began to be used with frequency at about the same time. Consequently, the number of companies involved in the industry increased dramatically, from fewer than 12 in 1968 to 180 in 1987 and 742 in 1998. Similarly, there has been a huge increase in the numbers of visitors*. In the early 1980's, this was estimated at 150 000 visitor days per year (40 times the visitation on the pre-1950 period). In 1987 this had risen to 450 000 and, 10 years later (1997), 1.6 million visitor-days were recorded. In financial terms, the gross output of tourism in 1987 was measured at around $200 million; by 1996, this had risen to roughly $650 million with the total value of reef tourism now calculated at over $1 billion (1999)(Davey, 2016). Growth forecasts for the next decade range from five to ten percent. As for fishing, the fishing industry in the Great Barrier Reef, controlled by the Queensland Government, is worth A$1 billion annually. It employs approximately 2000 people, and fishing in the Great Barrier Reef is pursued commercially, for recreation, and as a traditional means for feeding one's family (Davey, 2016).

Environmental Threats

Climate change, pollution, crown-of-thorns starfish and fishing are the primary threats to the health of this reef system. Other threats include shipping accidents, oil spills, and tropical cyclones. Skeletal Eroding Band, a disease of bony corals caused by the protozoan Halofolliculina corallasia, affects 31 coral species. According to a 2012 study by the National Academy of Science, since 1985, the Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals with two-thirds of the loss occurring from 1998 due to the factors listed before (National Geographic Partners LLC, 2016). Due to its extreme biodiversity, the Great Barrier Reef is a popular tourist destination and around two million people visit it per year. Scuba diving and tours via small boats and aircraft are the most popular activities on the reef. Since it is a fragile habitat, tourism of the Great Barrier Reef is highly managed and sometimes operated as ecotourism. All ships, aircraft and others that want to access the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park need to have a permit. Despite these protective measures however, the Great Barrier Reef's health is still threatened due to climate change, pollution, fishing and invasive species. Climate change and rising sea temperatures is considered the greatest threat to the reef because coral is a fragile species that needs water to be about 77˚F to 84˚F (25˚C to 29˚C) to survive (AVAAZ, 2014). Recently there have been episodes of coral bleaching due to higher temperatures.

Coral Bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef

As just stated above, elevated sea temperatures are the primary cause of mass coral bleaching events. Bleaching is a stress response of corals, during which they expel their zooxanthellae during unfavourable conditions, giving rise to the typical white colouration observed. Aside from temperature, other stressors such as tropical cyclones, freshwater inflows and anthropogenic pollution can also induce bleaching but to a far lesser extent and generally not on large spatial scales.

Bleaching has been observed on the Great Barrier Reef since 1982, with severe bleaching events occurring in the summers of 1998, 2002 and 2006. Major bleaching events in Southern Hemisphere reefs (Pacific and Indian Oceans) tend to occur in February-April, with a lag of up to a month in the bleaching response of corals following thermal stress. Mortality appears to increase with the intensity of the bleaching event, which is determined by how much and for how long temperatures remain above the maximum mean summer temperatures. Bleaching events in benthic coral communities (deeper than 20 metres or 66 feet) in the Great Barrier reef are not as well documented as those at shallower depths, but recent research has shown that benthic communities are just as negatively impacted in the face of rising ocean temperatures (Hopley, 2016). Five Great Barrier Reef species of large benthic corals were found bleached under elevated temperatures, affirming that benthic corals are vulnerable to thermal stress.

What is Being Done: The Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan

Some action has already taken place over the years to help prevent damage being inflicted upon the Great Barrier Reef. Royal Commissions disallowed oil drilling in the Great Barrier Reef, in 1975 the Government of Australia created the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and prohibited various activities. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park does not include the entire Great Barrier Reef Province.The park is managed, in partnership with the Government of Queensland, through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to ensure that it is used in a sustainable manner. A combination of zoning, management plans, permits, education and incentives (such as ecotourism certification) are employed in the effort to conserve the reef. In 1999, the Australian Parliament passed the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which improved the operation of national environmental law by providing guidance about regional biodiversity conservation priorities. The marine bioregional planning process came from the implementation of this law. This process conserves marine biodiversity by considering the whole ecosystem a species is in and how different species interact in the marine environment.

With clear understanding and recognition that the Great Barrier Reef is still under attack facing imminent environmental threats, both governmental and private organizations have taken a stand and made action towards the protection and Australia has permanently banned the disposal of port related capital dredge material in the entire World Heritage Area. The federal ban was announced at the World Parks Congress on 12 November 2014 and came into law on 2 June 2015. In the past 18 months the number of capital dredging proposals to place dredged material in the marine park has been reduced from five to zero. Capital dredging for ports will be restricted to within the long established priority ports of Gladstone, Hay Point/Mackay, Abbot Point and Townsville—and only within the legislated port limits. Legislation to this effect has been introduced into the Queensland Parliament. Australia has doubled funding to control crown-of-thorns starfish, to further protect the Reef’s corals. Tough new penalties against poaching will provide extra protection for turtles and dugongs, as will increased funding to reduce marine debris.

A form of declaration and implemented plan drafted by the Australian government and heavily affiliated and supported by Australian universities, private and public national organizations and environmental activities, a new joint-plan has been declared as the New Reef 2050 Plan. The new Reef 2050 Plan strengthens Australia’s management of the Reef to protect and preserve the living reef and its Outstanding Universal Value. By working together, all levels of government, the community, traditional owners, industry and the scientific community will improve, enhance and maintain the Reef’s health and deliver ecologically sustainable development. The Reef 2050 Plan is based on the best available scientific research, as well as lessons learnt from 40 years of cooperative management, and analysis of the entire Reef region from the comprehensive strategic assessment. The plan has concrete targets and actions, and everyone with a stake in the Reef has clear responsibilities. Both the Australian and Queensland governments are committed to delivering the best possible outcomes for the future protection and management of the Reef. Implementation of the Reef 2050 Plan is already underway and with ongoing scientific and community input we are focussing on prioritising investments and improving monitoring.

Conclusion

The Great Barrier Reef is a beautiful, unique and sanctioned wonder of the world. It is an emblem of biodiversity and beauty of the earth. It has many visitors, ranging from scientists, environmentalists and marine biologists to tourists, scuba divers, visitors and more. It houses millions of life species from coral to microorganisms to various exotic fish. Though it is under environmental threat with humans as a main cause for its disintegration, much efforts are being made to reduce pollution, exposure to toxins and coral bleaching. It is a beautiful part of the world that not only deserves recognition and visitation from all active global travelers of the world, but its protection from each of us standing together to preserve such a wonderful unique organism of the world.