Great Barrier Reef and preservation efforts
The Great Barrier Reef, located off the northeast coast of Australia, is a massive and biodiverse ecosystem comprising over 3,000 coral reefs and 700 islands, spanning more than 337,000 square kilometers. Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, it is celebrated not just for its stunning beauty but for its ecological significance, housing a wide array of marine and terrestrial species, including turtles, sharks, and numerous fish and bird species. Despite its grandeur, the reef faces significant threats from both natural and human-induced factors. Rising ocean temperatures, exacerbated by climate change and events like El Niño, have led to severe coral bleaching, with seven mass bleaching events reported since 1998. Additionally, overfishing, pollution, and agricultural runoff contribute further to its degradation. In response, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority oversees preservation efforts, implementing strategies such as a $5 billion investment from the Australian government to improve water quality and manage invasive species. The reef's health is critical not only for biodiversity but also for the tourism industry, which generates substantial economic benefits. As a result, ongoing preservation efforts are vital to safeguard this intricate ecosystem for future generations.
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Great Barrier Reef and preservation efforts
IDENTIFICATION: Massive oceanic ecosystem off the northeast coast of Australia
Despite ongoing efforts to protect and preserve the Great Barrier Reef, the survival of this intricate and delicate ecosystem is constantly threatened by both natural events and human activities.
The Great Barrier Reef is a biodiverse ecosystem of more than three thousand coral reefs and seven hundred individual islands (some barely a few yards across, but twenty-seven of them large enough to have tourist resorts) that follows the Australian coast off the state of Queensland. With its tremendous size (at more than 337,000 square kilometers, or 130,000 square miles, it is visible from space) and its compelling beauty, the reef enthralls the imagination apart from its value as an intricate ecosystem. It is, in a sense, a single living organism—although more precisely it is a colony of millions of tiny coral polyps (living creatures inside colored hard shells of aragonite, a calcium derivative that shapes the familiar fan and branch shapes of coral) that live atop the dead, bleached remains of earlier generations, building slowly, steadily, century after century, into an incredibly dense superorganism.
Within this vast construction of accumulated coral structures (most of it just feet below the ocean’s surface) thrives a diverse ecosystem in the pristine tropical waters that includes a wide variety of animal and plant species, among them green sea turtles, sharks, porpoises, whales, crocodiles, dugongs, and snakes, as well as more than one thousand species of fish and more than two hundred species of both land and marine birds. The Great Barrier Reef was designated a World Heritage Site in 1981 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a recognition reserved for natural and cultural sites deemed an irreplaceable part of humanity’s heritage.
Protecting the natural integrity and rich biodiversity of the massive reef is the special mission of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, an oversight committee of the Queensland state government. In addition to natural threats—including cyclones, disease, and periodic infestations of crown-of-thorns starfish that attack the coral polyps—the most prominent threat measured since the 1990s has come from slowly rising ocean temperatures from the effects of El Niño weather conditions and, increasingly, global warming linked to humans' exponential burning of fossil fuels and subsequent release of greenhouse gases over the years. These effects have consistently warmed the ocean's waters to higher temperatures than normal, which results in bleaching, the loss of tiny plants in the polyps that provide the coral its nutrients and, in turn, its rich coloring. According to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the reef has had seven mass bleaching events between 1998 and 2024, all caused by an increase in ocean temperature. In addition to bleaching, the Great Barrier Reef has been subject to other environmental stressors such as water acidity, increased sun exposure, and very low tides.
The reef has also been affected by changes in fish migrations that have resulted from overharvesting, unchecked pollution from land-based industries, and, most directly, fertilizers and pesticides carried into the ocean by a river system that collects from the scores of farms in northeastern Australia.
Scientists had been making advancements in an effort to help protect the reef through the support of a natural process designed to increase the reflectivity of clouds by using sea salt crystals that stay in the air, resulting in cloud brightening, which increases the amount of shade over the reef. To save the reef, the Australian government together with the Queensland government invested $5 billion from 2014 to 2030 to improve the water quality and control coral-eating starfish.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority also monitors the impacts of the more than two million visitors the reef attracts annually, an influx that accounts for close to $2 billion each year for the Australian tourism industry. More than five thousand commercial vessels cross the reef annually, ferrying scuba divers, snorkelers, and even people who want to walk the reef’s formations that lie closest to the surface. The authority monitors every aspect of these invasive encounters, from the effects of suntan oil on the formations to the impacts of fuel dumped by boats. Despite such protection, the Great Barrier Reef, because of the intricacy of its ecosystem and the fragility of its construction, is considered among the most threatened natural sites on the earth.
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