BAYAHIBE, Dominican Republic — Oxygen tank strapped to his back, Michael del Rosario moves his fins delicately as he glides along an underwater nursery just off the Dominican Republic coast, proudly showing off the “coral babies” growing on metal structures that look like large spiders. The conservationist enthusiastically points a finger to trace around the largest corals, just starting to reveal their vibrant colors.
Del Rosario helped plant these tiny animals in the nursery after they were conceived in an assisted reproduction laboratory run by the marine conservation organization Fundemar. In a process something like in vitro fertilization, coral egg and sperm are joined to form a new individual.
It’s a technique that’s gaining momentum in the Caribbean to counter the drastic loss of corals due to climate change, which is killing them by heating up oceans and making it more difficult for those that survive to reproduce naturally.
“We live on an island. We depend entirely on coral reefs, and seeing them all disappear is really depressing,” del Rosario said once back on the surface, his words flowing like bubbles underwater. “But seeing our coral babies growing, alive, in the sea gives us hope, which is what we were losing.”
The state of corals around the Dominican Republic, as in the rest of the world, is not encouraging. Fundemar’s latest monitoring last year found that 70% of the Dominican Republic’s reefs have less than 5% coral coverage. Healthy colonies are so far apart that the probability of one coral’s eggs meeting another’s sperm during the spawning season is decreasing.
“That’s why assisted reproduction programs are so important now, because what used to be normal in coral reefs is probably no longer possible for many species,” biologist Andreina Valdez, operations manager at Fundemar, said at the organization’s new marine research center. “So that’s where we come in to help a little bit.”
Though many people may think corals are plants, they are animals. They spawn once a year, a few days after the full moon and at dusk, when they release millions of eggs and sperm in a spectacle that turns the sea around them into a kind of Milky Way. Fundemar monitors spawning periods, collects eggs and sperm, performs assisted fertilization in the laboratory, and cares for the larvae until they are strong enough to be taken to the reef.
In the laboratory, Ariel Álvarez examines one of the star-shaped pieces on which the corals are growing through a microscope. They’re so tiny they can hardly be seen with the naked eye. Álvarez switches off the lights, turns on an ultraviolet light, and the coral’s rounded, fractal shapes appear through a camera on the microscope projected onto a screen.
One research center room holds dozens of fish tanks, each with hundreds of tiny corals awaiting return to the reef. Del Rosario said the lab produces more than 2.5 million coral embryos per year. Only 1% will survive in the ocean, yet that figure is better than the rate with natural fertilization on these degraded reefs now, he said.
In the past, Fundemar and other conservation organizations focused on asexual reproduction. That meant cutting a small piece of healthy coral and transplanting it to another location so that a new one would grow. The method can produce corals faster than assisted fertilization.
The problem, Andreina Valdez said, is that it clones the same individual, meaning all those coral share the same disease vulnerabilities. In contrast, assisted sexual reproduction creates genetically different individuals, reducing the chance that a single illness could strike them all down.
Australia pioneered assisted coral fertilization. It’s expanding in the Caribbean, with leading projects at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Carmabi Foundation in Curaçao, and it’s being adopted in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica, Valdez said.
“You can’t conserve something if you don’t have it. So (these programs) are helping to expand the population that’s out there,” said Mark Eakin, corresponding secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired chief of the Coral Reef Watch program of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But the world must still tackle “the 800-pound gorilla of climate change,” Eakin said, or a lot of the restoration work “is just going to be wiped out.”
Burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal produces greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, driving up temperatures both on Earth’s surface and in its seas. Oceans are warming at twice the rate of 20 years ago, according to UNESCO’s most recent State of the Ocean Report last year.
And that’s devastating for corals. Rising heat causes them to feel sick and expel the algae that live in their tissue and provide them both their striking colors and their food. The process is known as bleaching because it exposes the coral’s white skeleton. The corals may survive, but they are weakened and vulnerable to disease and death if temperatures don’t drop.
Half the world’s reefs have been lost since 1950, according to research by the University of British Columbia published in the journal One Earth.
For countries such as the Dominican Republic, in the so-called “hurricane corridor,” preserving reefs is particularly important. Coral skeletons help absorb wave energy, creating a natural barrier against stronger waves.
“What do we sell in the Dominican Republic? Beaches,” del Rosario said. “If we don’t have corals, we lose coastal protection, we lose the sand on our beaches, and we lose tourism.”
Corals also are home to more than 25% of marine life, making them crucial for the millions of people around the world who make a living from fishing.
Alido Luis Báez knows this well.
It’s not yet dawn in Bayahibe when he climbs into a boat to fish with his father, who at 65 still goes to sea every week. The engine roars as they travel mile after mile until the coastline fades into the horizon. To catch tuna, dorado, or marlin, Luis Báez sails up to 50 miles offshore.
“We didn’t have to go so far before,” he said. “But because of overfishing, habitat loss, and climate change, now you have to go a little further every day.”
Things were very different when his father, also named Alido Luis, started fishing in the 1970s. Back then, they went out in a sailboat, and the coral reefs were so healthy they found plenty of fish close to the coast.
“I used to be a diver, and I caught a lot of lobster and queen conch,” he said in a voice weakened by the passage of time. “In a short time, I would catch 50 or 60 pounds of fish. But now, to catch two or three fish, they spend the whole day out there.”
Del Rosario said there’s still time to halt the decline of the reefs.
“More needs to be done, of course … but we are investing a lot of effort and time to preserve what we love so much,” he said. “And we trust and believe that many people around the world are doing the same.”
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At a conference in 2019, marine biologist and coral reef conservationist Melanie McField was caught off guard by a question from another attendee: How does it feel to have dedicated your life to studying an ecosystem that will be the first one wiped off the planet?
“I’m rarely dumbfounded,” McField, who now serves as director of the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People initiative, told Gizmodo. Though she was well aware of the dire state the world’s coral reefs were in, the idea that these ecosystems could be the first to succumb to climate change came as an alarming new realization. “I just didn’t know what to say,” she said.
Today, McField is one of 160 authors of a landmark report confirming that the questioner that day may have been right. The 2025 Global Tipping Points Report, released by the University of Exeter and international partners on Sunday, finds that the world’s warm-water coral reefs have become the first Earth system to cross its thermal tipping point.
The report comes as global ministers gather in Brazil to meet in preparation for the 30th annual UN Climate Change Conference in November. During these meetings, leaders attempt to reach some consensus on the key climate issues facing the planet. The report’s authors hope their findings will help drive decision makers to take meaningful action to curb global warming.
“We need to have stubborn people at the table in these negotiations who say, ‘We want to keep coral reefs on the planet,’” McField said.
The rising threat of ocean warming
Higher ocean temperatures are forcing many of the world’s corals to expel the symbiotic algae, or zooxanthellae, that live in their tissues—a process known as coral bleaching. These algae not only give corals their signature bright colors, but also provide them with oxygen and essential nutrients through photosynthesis.
Earth is in the midst of its fourth global coral bleaching event, according to NOAA. Since January 2023, bleaching-level heat stress has impacted 84.4% of the world’s coral reefs, with scientists documenting mass coral bleaching in at least 83 countries and territories. This is the second such event in the last 10 years and the largest on record.
The good news is this: Bleached corals are not necessarily dead corals. If ocean temperatures return to a cooler state for a sustained period of time, algae can recolonize a bleached reef. The bad news, however, is that climate change is increasing the severity of bleaching events while decreasing the amount of recovery time between them. As a result, the odds of corals bouncing back are rapidly dwindling.
“This is why ocean warming is such a scary thing,” Mark Hixon, a leading coral reef expert and professor of marine biology at the University of Hawaii who was not involved in the report, told Gizmodo. “Especially now with the ocean starting to warm very, very rapidly, we’ll be seeing more frequent and more severe bleaching events.”
At what point does the global average temperature of Earth’s oceans become so warm that the majority of coral reefs won’t be able to survive bleaching events? This is where the idea of a thermal tipping point comes in. Researchers estimate the thermal tipping point for warm-water coral reefs to be 2.16 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) of global surface warming above pre-industrial levels. The planet is already past that point.
Entering uncharted waters
Crossing this threshold doesn’t mean that all the world’s reefs are going to die tomorrow. “That’s not what we’re saying,” McField said. “We’re saying we’re in the zone where death—the tipping of the whole ecosystem—is underway.”
Each coral reef is unique, with different species, local water temperatures, non-thermal stressors, ecosystem intactness, and resilience levels. These and other factors shape a reef’s survivability. But in a warming world, all reefs—regardless of their individual conditions and characteristics—are at greater risk.
“Let’s say we’ve got 100 humans, and they all go to the doctor,” McField said. “All of them have cholesterol levels of 300—which is incredibly dangerous. They’re still going to die at different rates.”
The report finds that Earth’s global surface temperature may rise 2.7°F (1.5°C) above pre-industrial levels within the next 10 years. This is the upper range of the thermal tipping point for warm-water coral reefs.
At that point, “We’re in new territory,” McField said. Even under the most optimistic scenario, in which global warming stabilizes at 2.7°F without any overshoot, warm-water coral reefs are “virtually certain” to tip, the report states.
Where we go from here
Scientists around the world are working to protect and restore coral reefs. Some strategies center on improving coral resilience through genetic modification—selectively breeding them for resiliency traits.
“This can work to some degree, to keep from losing species entirely,” McField said.
“But when you think about how that could ever be applied on an ecosystem scale, with so little money going into on-the-ground work in reef countries… how is that going to be an economic option?”
Other strategies aim to minimize other potential stressors, like pollution or destructive fishing practices. Hixon, for example, is working to improve water quality and protect herbivorous fish species in Hawaii, which could reduce the overall strain on coral reefs and help them rebound from bleaching events.
Still, this work can’t mitigate all the effects of rapidly rising temperatures. The report states that the Earth needs stringent emission mitigation and enhanced carbon removal to bring the global average surface temperatures back down to 1.8°F (1°C) above pre-industrial levels. “These temperatures are essential for retaining functional warm-water coral reefs at meaningful scale,” the report says.
“It’s incumbent upon the scientific community to engage with stakeholders of all kinds on the threats to the reefs, how they’re accelerating, and how there are certain tangible steps we can take to try to save our reefs from loss,” Hixon said.
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
“Can you hear that sound like pouring milk on Rice Krispies? It’s the snapping shrimp — they have one massive claw and one small one. They’re really tiny and live inside the coral.” Having shared this nugget of information, my snorkelling guide Lisa D’Silva abruptly dips her head back underwater like a duck. I follow suit, the sound of wheeling birds overhead becoming muffled, my eyes scanning the seabed.
While the shrimp remain hidden, what I can see very clearly is the carpet of corals beneath the jetty of Yenbuba village. The deep-green lips of a giant clam the size of a crouching man quiver and shut as we float past, causing gentle tremors in the shallow waters. There are forests of twiggy staghorn coral and fields of beautifully scrolled cabbage corals. And dancing around them are colonies of finned friends: batfish, unicornfish, rabbitfish. I spot skinny needlefish with sharp protruding noses, and bloated, spiky porcupinefish and pufferfish. Then there are the hawksbill turtles — one is tearing up hard coral with his hooked beak to reveal the soft sponges inside, determined to get at his dinner despite repeatedly being flipped almost vertical by rhythmic sea swells.
The colourful jetty to Yenbekwan welcomes visitors. Photograph by Simon Urwin
Underwater scenes like this play out on repeat in Raja Ampat, a remote region of Southwest Papua in far eastern Indonesia. Comprising around 1,500 islands over 15,000sq miles, it sits at the heart of an area known as the Coral Triangle. Raja’s marine stats are mind-boggling: some 75% of the planet’s corals are found here — 10 times the number of species in the Caribbean and more than is found at the Great Barrier Reef — and these forests of the ocean support more than 1,500 fish species. Some areas of Raja Ampat have 100% coral cover on the seabed. More than half the region is ring-fenced via a network of marine protected areas (MPAs). And if Raja is the heart of the Coral Triangle, the Dampier Strait, where I am now, is the very heart of that heart.
“It’s the most marine biodiverse place in the world — that we know of,” said Lynn Lawrance when she’d introduced our group to Raja’s uniqueness at our first trip briefing the previous night, explaining the importance of the coral reefs for fish populations and even pharmaceutical development. Australia-born Lynn and her French husband Arnaud Brival are co-founders of a grassroots NGO called The Sea People (Orang Laut, in Indonesian), which specialises in Raja Ampat reef restoration. Her uniform is either a baggy Orang Laut-branded vest, cargo shorts and flip-flops, or a dive suit. We’re both here for the launch of a new coral conservation voyage run by Rascal, a liveaboard boat tour operator that’s also passionate about preserving these waters.
Roni Bobo is captain of the ship Rebel, and is descended from Banda Sea pirates. Photograph by Simon Urwin
The dinner table aboard Rebel often features delicacies from the surrounding waters, such as spiced prawns with lime. Photograph by Simon Urwin
With our five-cabin ship called Rebel as a base, our small group will spend five days at sea exploring Raja Ampat below and above the water. Along the way, we’ll also learn about The Sea People’s important coral gardening work — the process of restoring degraded reefs by transplanting coral fragments taken from healthy sites. Which is why we’re here at Yenbuba, a village reef that Lynn’s team restored in 2021.
As we snorkel onwards, Lisa — Rebel’s onboard marine biologist — points out corals that have been grafted onto wire mesh as part of the restoration work, now barely visible due to successful regrowth. She also motions thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate normal corals compared with those that are stressed. Among the healthy browns and yellows, we find pockets of bright white and neon blues. The latter represent beautiful disasters: signs of coral bleaching. As in other parts of the world, these reefs are being affected by rising sea temperatures. So far, though, The Sea People’s data suggests Raja’s corals are surprisingly resilient — so much so that transplants from this area may in future be able to help save reefs in other parts of the world. And despite any stresses, the life of this seabed feels like poetry in motion; a world so surprisingly vivid and beautiful that I’m reluctant to leave the water and consider its vulnerability.
Bleaching is just one of the challenges for the corals. “Yenbuba is a site that gets quite a lot of human pressure,” Lynn explains, as we bounce across the sea in a small tender boat on our way back to Rebel. The further we travel out from Yenbuba, the easier it is to marvel at how tightly the village is wedged between reef and rock. Sheer karst cliffs rise abruptly behind the huddle of metal-roofed houses. The villagers live their lives right over the water and, as idyllic as it looks, there’s an impact. Fishing habits, coral mining and human pollution can contribute to degradation of the underwater ecosystems.
“The restoration project happened during Covid and it was the first one that was done by a completely local team — but that’s normal now,” says Lynn. Giving Raja’s communities agency to manage reef conservation work themselves is one of The Sea People’s key missions; Lynn has spent years teaching locals from these villages how to plant the corals successfully and working with communities to protect the reef habitats. “One of my and Arnaud’s dreams is for reef restoration to be the highest-paying job in the area,” she explains. “At the moment, the rock star job in Raja is being a dive instructor, but coral gardeners are beginning to be looked up to.”
The Sea People’s Cori Junfaly Patty records the health of Yaf Keru reef ona dive from Yenbekwan village. Photograph by Simon Urwin
One of these coral gardeners is Cornelia Junfaly Patty — Cori — who works with Lynn and is also on board with us. When she emerges from her dive, droplets of water linger like trapped diamonds in her thick plaited hair. She’s one of Raja Ampat’s first homegrown marine biologists and was raised in the village of Yenbekwan, our next stop. At the rainbow-coloured wooden jetty, half-dressed kids jump about in the water like a shoal of flying fish. “I grew up here on the reef and we all snorkelled, but I didn’t know how to identify what I was seeing,” Cori tells me as we disembark to take a stroll through the village, the freckles across her cheeks emerging in the strong sunlight. “That’s why I wanted to study marine biology.”
The reef at Yenbekwan is another of The Sea People’s projects, and Lynn and Arnaud’s houseboat is moored here around nine months of the year. The site is named Yaf Keru, which means ‘coral garden’ in the local Biak language.
The village gardens of Yenbekwan end abruptly at a sheer jungle wall and porches dangle over the reef. At the centre, we come to a huge church with twin steeples painted the colour of the cloudless sky, as well as a small chapel. The latter marks the landing point where Indonesian missionaries brought Christianity to the island in 1936, part of the en masse conversions that occurred in Papua during the 19th and 20th centuries. “Before that, the stones and the trees were our deities,” says Cori, describing the animistic beliefs that once tied Raja Ampat’s communities to the land.
Back in the water, we get a closer look at Lynn and Cori’s low-tech coral gardening work. Divers able to confidently control their buoyancy can try it for themselves, as can snorkellers able to duck-dive and hold their breath. More than 80,000 fragments have been planted at Yaf Keru this way over almost a decade, and the underwater landscape looks like a vast forest in various stages of regrowth. As a novice, I opt to watch from the surface with a snorkel and fins. Hovering like a bird in flight, I see Cori crouch on the seabed and deftly tie a coral fragment to a carpet of wire mesh that has stabilised the degraded substrate, like a thread in a giant tapestry.
Guest rooms are above deck, thanks to removal of the boat’s masts. Photograph by Simon Urwin
Rebel is a customised version of a wooden pinisi sailing boat. Photograph by Simon Urwin
Oceanic alchemy
Life at sea in Raja Ampat is like floating through a dream. My cabin is all polished woods, big picture windows and comfy palm-print cushions. I fall asleep each night to the gentle lolling of the boat and throaty growl of the engine as we journey onwards, waking each morning to a silken silence and different seascape. Rarely do we see another boat, and when we do, it has the eerie demeanour of an ancient pirate galleon, with a sword-like bow and tall sail mast. It’s the typical look of Indonesia’s traditional wooden pinisi boats, still handmade on the beaches of South Sulawesi — a skill listed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Many are now used as liveaboard dive boats in Raja Ampat. Rebel is a customised version of one, with a covered wooden deck where we take our meals at a huge communal table; a small air-conditioned bar area where marine biology presentations are held; and a flat rooftop for sundowners with 360-degree views.
Despite the alluring comfort of our personal travelling island, the landscape inspires exploration. The day after our visit to Yenbekwan, we rise in the velvety cocoon of first light to go birdwatching in Waisilip Bay. Taking two tenders out, we skim over reefs so shallow and waters so clear I can see tiny yellow fish darting among a shelf of staghorn corals from the boat. Amid a deafening dawn chorus, our binoculars rake over palm cockatoos and a pair of white-bellied sea eagles in the towering canopy of jungle teak, then the russet face of a local possum-like marsupial called a cuscus. Somewhere, beyond a veil of palm fronds, there’s the ‘cah cah’ call of Raja’s endemic red bird of paradise, known for its magnificent plume of fiery feathers.
White-bellied sea eagles can often be spotted in the jungles of Waisilip Bay. Photograph by Simon Urwin
Suddenly, we become aware we’re being watched. A gnarled snout, a pair of beady yellow eyes — a saltwater crocodile has emerged directly in front of our boat. It’s rare to see them on the reefs, but Cori says every year locals get caught out and there are casualties. Their relationship with this marine predator is complex and intertwined with tradition. “A long time ago people believed the crocodiles were gods,” she whispers, as we quietly watch its movements. “They still believe they protect the area.
Marsupials and birds of paradise in the jungles and saltwater crocodiles on the reefs are just some of the wildlife quirks of Raja Ampat. The fauna here has been partially dictated by its location east of the Wallace Line. A curious biogeographical boundary first drawn in 1859 by a contemporary of Charles Darwin’s, it shows how wildlife distribution and evolution have been shaped by landmass movements millions of years ago. The line falls around Bali; where we are, the wildlife and even Indigenous human genetics have more in common with Australia than with Asia.
Enigmas come in all forms, I discover. I wake at dawn one day to find us drifting among an otherworldly landscape of dozens of tiny islands, our boat trailed by several blacktip reef sharks. We’ve reached Wayag, 60 miles north of the Dampier Strait — one of Raja Ampat’s most beautiful, and photographed, areas. The karst rock here is calcium carbonate — old coral reefs that erode easily in the sea. “That’s why you get these mushroom-shaped islands that are very iconic to this area,” explains Lisa, the pair of us breathless and sweaty as we scramble to the top of an island viewpoint called Pindito Point for a better look.
The mushroom-like islands of Wayag are one of Raja Ampat’s most famous sights. Photograph by Simon Urwin
From here, the ocean beneath us is marbled from the underlying reefs, the islands stretching for miles like ink dots blotted on its surface. It’s the same aerial perspective that marine biologists use to monitor manta ray activity, Lisa tells me. “They use drone shots to see the IDs of the mantas as they roll on their bellies, so they know it’s a pup nursery area because the same females come here each year for protection.”
Later that day, Lisa’s presentation on manta rays gives us the tools to identify the gentle giants we’re hoping to see on our afternoon dive. If it’s got a white mouth and a wingspan of around 11 feet, it’ll be a reef manta; if it’s got a black mouth, it’s likely to be an oceanic manta. The latter can grow as large as 23 feet across. “That’s the width of Rebel,” says Lisa, to audible gasps from our assembled group of diving novices. “They were only formally described in 2009. There are at least 700 that have been photo-identified in Raja Ampat. It’s one of the best places to see them.”
An hour later, as I stare into the gaping abyss of a manta’s mouth trying to identify it, the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Is it white or black? It’s unexpectedly graceful for a creature so huge and it’s moving so slowly it almost looks like an eagle caught in a headwind. It’s my second scuba dive of the trip and my ears are popping as I struggle to tread water without being pulled away by the current along the reef shelf. With a wingspan of about 10 feet, this is a reef manta, I conclude. She loops around, disappearing into the murk and then returning moments later. I remember another fact from Lisa’s presentation; that mantas have the biggest brain-to-body ratio of any fish. “They’re inquisitive. You really can make eye contact with them,” she’d said with a smile. Though I can’t see this manta’s eyes, I’m convinced she’s looking straight at me.
Reef mantas are a common sighting in Wayag, where females go with pups and visit cleaning stations to remove parasite. Photograph by Simon Urwin
Fed by a jungle spring, Kali Biru river is considered sacred. Photograph by Simon Urwin
Sacred waters
The natural world is so raw and unapologetically dominant in Raja Ampat that it’s easy to understand why it became intertwined with locals’ belief systems. The following day we visit Mayalibit Bay, an area wreathed in tribal legends, where the bones of ancient warriors rest in a mountain cave and nature is still worshipped at a sacred river. Over the past eight years, the community here has opened up to tourism, inviting visitors to dip into the waters.
“Our family name is Mentansan; ment means ‘people’ and ansan means ‘strong’ in Papuan,” says Pasai Ramar, the nephew of community elder Alfred Mentansan. When I meet him at his village’s small wooden jetty, he’s bare-chested and still dripping from a swim. Thousands of years ago, he says, before the concept of Indonesia, this bay was the home of the King of Waigeo and the Maya tribe, whose warriors would come to the river to connect with god before going into battle.
“We still come here every week for family gatherings. They say when you jump into the water, you think about challenges coming,” adds Utin Lisa, my village guide, as we hike into the jungle behind the settlement, the smell of petrichor replacing briny sea spray, the mountaintops smudged with rain clouds. She’s barefoot, dressed in a version of what the Maya tribe would have worn in ancient times: a headdress made from junglefowl feathers; cuffs of coconut palm bark fixed with tiny shells and bright-red berries; a skirt fashioned from dried sago palm leaves.
In Mayalibit Bay, Utin Lisa wears the traditional clothes of the area’s ancient Maya tribe on trips into the jungle. Photograph by Simon Urwin
But none of her garb is as startling as the brilliant clarity of the Kali Biru river, which we reach after 10 minutes of sweaty hiking. Descending a slippery wooden staircase, I enter a world very different from the reef. It’s one of complete stillness, with trailing branches and moss-slickened boulders — all submerged yet visible as I become enveloped by the river’s sharp coolness and gentle current. We float beneath an arcade of jungle creepers, at eye level with giant banyan tree roots plunging deep into the sandy riverbanks. No wonder the village’s ancestors considered this place sacred.
I hold tight to this sense of wonder when I slip back into the bath-like sea for one final snorkel come nightfall, hoping to find one of Raja’s most curious creatures: the epaulette — a ‘walking shark’ that crawls over the reef using its pectoral and pelvic fins. Under a cloak of darkness, I feel like I’m cast adrift in space, the corals beneath me the surface of an unfamiliar planet. A pair of translucent squid pulsate in my peripheral vision as needlefish dart skittishly towards the light of the torch strapped to my wrist. The seabed reveals the swollen limbs of a crown of thorns starfish — one of the problem predators of Raja’s reefs — next to the skeletal remains of the coral it’s sucked the life out of.
Then we spot it: a small, patterned walking shark, directly below us, feeding among a reef forest, its long-finned tail intertwined with the slender fingers of branching coral. As I observe it intently, trying to work out if it’s crawling or swimming, I realise I’m also being watched again. Hundreds of tiny eyes are lighting up the sea. A galaxy of stars, accompanied by the sound of popping Rice Krispies, magnified in the void of night. The ocean has finally revealed its snapping shrimp — and the scene is ethereal, fantastical and, in the right light, verging close to heavenly.
Published in the October 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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KANEOHE BAY, Hawaii — Landing gear from a U.S. Navy jet pulverized coral when it came to a stop in an environmentally sensitive Hawaii bay after overshooting a Hawaii runway nearly two weeks ago, a state official said Monday.
Kim Fuller, an aquatic biologist with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, said divers are working to quantify the extent of the damage now that the plane has has been removed from the water.
Navy officials said Monday that a team worked through the weekend to use inflatable cylinders, or roller bags, to lift and roll the plane off the reef where it crashed on Nov. 20 and move it to the nearby runway at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay.
Rear Adm. Kevin Lenox, the commander of Carrier Strike Group 3 who is leading the $1.5 million salvage effort, said absorbent material around the plane showed no indication of any fluid other than sea water, giving officials confidence that the plane hadn’t released any hazardous materials such as fuel.
A Navy team earlier removed nearly all of the estimated 2,000 gallons (7,500 liters) of fuel from the aircraft.
None of the nine people on board the P-8A — the military’s version of a Boeing 737 — were injured. The Navy is investigating the cause of the crash.
The Navy released underwater video last week showing the aircraft’s wheels resting on parts of crushed coral and much of the rest of the plane floating above the reef.
During a dive Sunday, state divers snorkeled along the shoreline and looked at the plane’s path into the water, Fuller said. In addition to pulverized coral at the primary impact area, there was some coral damage caused by the anchors of containment booms, she said. Some coral had also been overturned or scraped, she said.
“However, I do feel that the impact area likely is much smaller than the size of the aircraft,” she said, adding that it will take time to delineate and quantify the extent of the damage.
“I would say we’ve seen the majority of the worst damage,” she said.
Kaneohe Bay is home to coral reefs and a lot of other marine life. The area hosts an ancient Hawaiian fishpond being restored by community groups.
OFF THE COAST OF GALVESTON, Texas — Divers descending into azure waters far off the Texas coast dip below a horizon dotted with oil and gas platforms into an otherworldly landscape of undersea mountains crusted with yellow, orange and pink coral as far as the eye can see.
Some of the world’s healthiest coral reefs can be found in the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the Texas coast. Sheltered in a deep, cool habitat far from shore, the reefs in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary boast a stunning amount of coral coverage. But scientists say that like all reefs, they are fragile, and their location will only offer protection for so long in the face of a warming climate.
“To see that much coral in one place is really magnificent — an experience that most people don’t get on reefs in this day and age,” said Michelle Johnston, the acting superintendent and research coordinator for the federally protected area.
The sanctuary had some moderate bleaching this year but nothing like the devastation that hit other reefs during the summer’s record-breaking heat. Still, Johnston said that’s among her top concerns for the sanctuary’s future. Waters that get too warm cause corals to expel their colorful algae and turn white. They can survive if temperatures fall but they are left more vulnerable to disease and may eventually die.
Florida’s coral reef — the world’s third-largest — experienced an unprecedented and potentially deadly level of bleaching over the summer. Derek Manzello, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch, said that so far this year, at least 35 countries and territories across five oceans and seas have experienced mass coral bleaching. He said it’s too early to know how much of Florida’s reefs will recover since coral may die as much as a year or two after the bleaching.
Manzello said climate models suggest that all of the world’s coral will be suffering severe bleaching every year beginning around 2040.
“If you have severe bleaching events every year, the prognosis is not good because that basically means the corals aren’t going to have a chance to recover,” he said.
Sanctuary officials say even in the occasional years when Flower Garden Banks has experienced more serious bleaching than this year, it has bounced back quickly thanks to its overall health and depth, and it’s already recovering this year.
A report expected in the coming months will look at the sanctuary’s vulnerability to the projected effects of climate change.
The Flower Garden Banks stands out for its amount of coral cover — an average of over 50 percent across some areas of the sanctuary — compared with around 10 percent cover in the Caribbean and Northwest Atlantic region, Manzello said. Its corals are also about 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface and surrounded by even deeper waters, compared with many reefs where corals are in shallower water just offshore.
In the early 1900s, fishermen told of peering into the Gulf’s waters and seeing a colorful display that reminded them of a blooming garden, but it was such an unusual spot so far from shore that scientists making the initial dives in the 1960s were surprised to actually find thriving coral reefs.
The corals in the Flower Garden Banks were able to flourish so far from shore because of mountain-like formations called salt domes, which lifted the corals high enough to catch the light, Johnston said.
Divers travel from around the world to see the reefs at Flower Garden Banks, where colorful fish, manta rays, sharks and sea turtles waft through and worms that look like Christmas trees pop in and out of corals.
Andy Lewis, a Houston attorney, said he knew from his first trip to the sanctuary about a decade ago that it was “going to have to be part of my life.” Lewis became a divemaster and is now president of Texas Caribbean Charters, which takes about 1,000 people a year out on diving trips there, with about half making a return trip.
“It’s just a real adventure,” said Lewis, who also serves on the sanctuary’s advisory board. “I love getting on the boat.”
That boat leaves from a spot near Galveston, where currents from Mississippi River drop sediment that turns the water near shore a murky brown. By the time the boat motors out to the sanctuary, the water is clear and blue.
“You drop down and you are on top of live coral as far as you can see,” Lewis said.
Lauren Tinnes, a nurse from Colorado, described rounding a bluff on her dive this fall and being surrounded by massive reefs as schools of fish darted through. She found the description from so long ago apt: “It’s like a field of flowers,” she said.
The Flower Garden Banks is one of 15 national marine sanctuaries and two national marine monuments protected by the NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and the only one in the Gulf of Mexico.
The sanctuary is made up of 17 separate banks that cover 160 square miles (414 square kilometers). When it was designated in 1992, the sanctuary had two banks. Its largest and most recent expansion of 14 banks came in 2021, a process that included input from the advisory committee, which includes representatives from industries that rely on the Gulf, from oil and gas to recreation to fishing.
Johnston said that one way to help the reefs stay healthy is to reduce stresses. That includes making sure mooring buoys offer boats a place to tie up so their anchors don’t damage reefs, and removing invasive species that could cause the number of fish to decline.
Manzello said efforts like those are being done in hopes that greenhouse gas emissions will also be cut globally.
“We need all of these things happening in concert to really shepherd coral reefs through the next 20, 30, 40 years,” Manzello said.
Coral reefs support about a fourth of all marine species at some point in their life cycle. They are also economic drivers. By providing a home for fish that keeps them healthy, they support commercial fishing in addition to bringing in tourism revenue.
“Because coral reefs are declining all over the globe, when we find ones that are healthy, we want to keep them that way,” said Kelly Drinnen, education and outreach specialist for the Flower Garden Banks. “And they kind of serve as the repositories for what could help restore some other reef potentially in the future.”
In fact, samples of healthy corals from the sanctuary are being banked and studied in a lab at Galveston Island’s Moody Gardens, a tourist destination that includes an aquarium. That includes growing out fragments of coral with hopes of someday replanting them.
The Flower Garden Banks weren’t damaged by the massive oil spill that followed the deadly 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, but other reefs in the Gulf were. Data gathered from studying the sanctuary’s deeper habitat is being used to help guide restoration of those reefs.
Researchers are also studying the genetics of the Flower Garden Banks coral, including whether it’s different than species in Florida.
“The more knowledge we have, the better we are equipped to try to protect that reef,” said Brooke Zurita, a senior biologist at Moody Gardens.
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Stengle reported from Dallas. LaFleur reported from Galveston.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
OFF THE COAST OF GALVESTON, Texas — Divers descending into azure waters far off the Texas coast dip below a horizon dotted with oil and gas platforms into an otherworldly landscape of undersea mountains crusted with yellow, orange and pink coral as far as the eye can see.
Some of the world’s healthiest coral reefs can be found in the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the Texas coast. Sheltered in a deep, cool habitat far from shore, the reefs in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary boast a stunning amount of coral coverage. But scientists say that like all reefs, they are fragile, and their location will only offer protection for so long in the face of a warming climate.
“To see that much coral in one place is really magnificent — an experience that most people don’t get on reefs in this day and age,” said Michelle Johnston, the acting superintendent and research coordinator for the federally protected area.
The sanctuary had some moderate bleaching this year but nothing like the devastation that hit other reefs during the summer’s record-breaking heat. Still, Johnston said that’s among her top concerns for the sanctuary’s future. Waters that get too warm cause corals to expel their colorful algae and turn white. They can survive if temperatures fall but they are left more vulnerable to disease and may eventually die.
Florida’s coral reef — the world’s third-largest — experienced an unprecedented and potentially deadly level of bleaching over the summer. Derek Manzello, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch, said that so far this year, at least 35 countries and territories across five oceans and seas have experienced mass coral bleaching. He said it’s too early to know how much of Florida’s reefs will recover since coral may die as much as a year or two after the bleaching.
Manzello said climate models suggest that all of the world’s coral will be suffering severe bleaching every year beginning around 2040.
“If you have severe bleaching events every year, the prognosis is not good because that basically means the corals aren’t going to have a chance to recover,” he said.
Sanctuary officials say even in the occasional years when Flower Garden Banks has experienced more serious bleaching than this year, it has bounced back quickly thanks to its overall health and depth, and it’s already recovering this year.
A report expected in the coming months will look at the sanctuary’s vulnerability to the projected effects of climate change.
The Flower Garden Banks stands out for its amount of coral cover — an average of over 50 percent across some areas of the sanctuary — compared with around 10 percent cover in the Caribbean and Northwest Atlantic region, Manzello said. Its corals are also about 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface and surrounded by even deeper waters, compared with many reefs where corals are in shallower water just offshore.
In the early 1900s, fishermen told of peering into the Gulf’s waters and seeing a colorful display that reminded them of a blooming garden, but it was such an unusual spot so far from shore that scientists making the initial dives in the 1960s were surprised to actually find thriving coral reefs.
The corals in the Flower Garden Banks were able to flourish so far from shore because of mountain-like formations called salt domes, which lifted the corals high enough to catch the light, Johnston said.
Divers travel from around the world to see the reefs at Flower Garden Banks, where colorful fish, manta rays, sharks and sea turtles waft through and worms that look like Christmas trees pop in and out of corals.
Andy Lewis, a Houston attorney, said he knew from his first trip to the sanctuary about a decade ago that it was “going to have to be part of my life.” Lewis became a divemaster and is now president of Texas Caribbean Charters, which takes about 1,000 people a year out on diving trips there, with about half making a return trip.
“It’s just a real adventure,” said Lewis, who also serves on the sanctuary’s advisory board. “I love getting on the boat.”
That boat leaves from a spot near Galveston, where currents from Mississippi River drop sediment that turns the water near shore a murky brown. By the time the boat motors out to the sanctuary, the water is clear and blue.
“You drop down and you are on top of live coral as far as you can see,” Lewis said.
Lauren Tinnes, a nurse from Colorado, described rounding a bluff on her dive this fall and being surrounded by massive reefs as schools of fish darted through. She found the description from so long ago apt: “It’s like a field of flowers,” she said.
The Flower Garden Banks is one of 15 national marine sanctuaries and two national marine monuments protected by the NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and the only one in the Gulf of Mexico.
The sanctuary is made up of 17 separate banks that cover 160 square miles (414 square kilometers). When it was designated in 1992, the sanctuary had two banks. Its largest and most recent expansion of 14 banks came in 2021, a process that included input from the advisory committee, which includes representatives from industries that rely on the Gulf, from oil and gas to recreation to fishing.
Johnston said that one way to help the reefs stay healthy is to reduce stresses. That includes making sure mooring buoys offer boats a place to tie up so their anchors don’t damage reefs, and removing invasive species that could cause the number of fish to decline.
Manzello said efforts like those are being done in hopes that greenhouse gas emissions will also be cut globally.
“We need all of these things happening in concert to really shepherd coral reefs through the next 20, 30, 40 years,” Manzello said.
Coral reefs support about a fourth of all marine species at some point in their life cycle. They are also economic drivers. By providing a home for fish that keeps them healthy, they support commercial fishing in addition to bringing in tourism revenue.
“Because coral reefs are declining all over the globe, when we find ones that are healthy, we want to keep them that way,” said Kelly Drinnen, education and outreach specialist for the Flower Garden Banks. “And they kind of serve as the repositories for what could help restore some other reef potentially in the future.”
In fact, samples of healthy corals from the sanctuary are being banked and studied in a lab at Galveston Island’s Moody Gardens, a tourist destination that includes an aquarium. That includes growing out fragments of coral with hopes of someday replanting them.
The Flower Garden Banks weren’t damaged by the massive oil spill that followed the deadly 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, but other reefs in the Gulf were. Data gathered from studying the sanctuary’s deeper habitat is being used to help guide restoration of those reefs.
Researchers are also studying the genetics of the Flower Garden Banks coral, including whether it’s different than species in Florida.
“The more knowledge we have, the better we are equipped to try to protect that reef,” said Brooke Zurita, a senior biologist at Moody Gardens.
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Stengle reported from Dallas. LaFleur reported from Galveston.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Some Florida Keys coral reefs are losing their color weeks earlier than normal this summer because of record-high water temperatures, meaning they are under stress and their health is potentially endangered, federal scientists said.
The corals should be vibrant and colorful this time of year, but are swiftly going white, said Katey Lesneski, research and monitoring coordinator for Mission: Iconic Reefs, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched to protect Florida coral reefs.
“The corals are pale, it looks like the color’s draining out,” said Lesneski, who has spent several days on the reefs over the last two weeks. “And some individuals are stark white. And we still have more to come.”
Scientists with NOAA this week raised their coral bleaching warning system to Alert Level 2 for the Keys, their highest heat stress level out of five. That level is reached when the average water surface temperature is about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) above the normal maximum for eight straight weeks.
Surface temperatures around the Keys have been averaging about 91 degrees (33 Celsius), well above the normal mid-July average of 85 degrees (29.5 Celsius), said Jacqueline De La Cour, operations manager for NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program. Previous Alert Level 2s were reached in August, she said.
Coral reefs are made up of tiny organisms that link together. The reefs get their color from the algae that live inside them and are the corals’ food. When temperatures get too high, the coral expels the algae, making the reefs appear white or bleached. That doesn’t mean they are dead, but the corals can starve and are more susceptible to disease.
Andrew Bruckner, research coordinator at the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, said some coral reefs began showing the first signs of bleaching two weeks ago. Then in the last few days, some reefs lost all their color. That had never been recorded before Aug. 1. The peak for bleaching typically happens in late August or September.
“We are at least a month ahead of time, if not two months,” Bruckner said. “We’re not yet at the point where we are seeing any mortality … from bleaching. It is still a minor number that are completely white, certain species, but it is much sooner than we expected.”
Still, forecasting what will happen the rest of the summer is hard, De La Cour and Bruckner said. While water temperatures could continue to spike — which could be devastating — a tropical storm or hurricane could churn the water and cool it down. Dusty air from the Sahara Desert moving across the Atlantic and settling over Florida could dampen the sun’s rays, lowering temperatures.
Because of climate change and other factors, the Keys waters have lost 80% to 90% of their coral over the last 50 years, Bruckner said. That affects not only marine life that depends on the reefs for survival, but also people — coral reefs are a natural buffer against storm surge from hurricanes and other storms. There is also an economic impact because tourism from fishing, scuba diving and snorkeling is heavily dependent on coral reefs.
“People get in the water, let’s fish, let’s dive — that’s why protecting Florida’s coral reef is so critical,” De La Cour said.
Both scientists said it is not “all doom and gloom.” A 20-year, large-scale effort is underway to rebuild Florida’s coral back to about 90% of where it was 50 years ago. Bruckner said scientists are breeding corals that can better withstand the heat and are using simple things like shade covers and underwater fans to cool the water to help them survive.
“We are looking for answers and we are trying to do something, rather than just looking away,” Bruckner said.
Breeding corals can encourage heat resistance in future generations of the animals, said Jason Spadaro, coral reef restoration program manager for Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida. That could be vital to saving them, he said.
Spadaro and others who have visited the corals said they have noticed the coral bleaching is worse in the lower Keys than in the more northern parts of the area. The Keys have experienced bad bleaching years in the past, but this year it is “really aggressive and it’s really persistent,” he said.
“It’s going to be a rough year for the reef. It hammers home the need to continue this important work,” he said.
The early bleaching is happening during a year when water temperatures are spiking earlier than normal, said Ross Cunning, a research biologist at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. The Keys are experiencing water temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), which would normally not occur until August or September, he said.
The hot water could lead to a “disastrous bleaching event” if it does not wane, Cunning said.
“We’re seeing temperatures now that are even higher than what we normally see at peak, which is what makes this particularly scary,” Cunning said.
De La Cour said she has no doubt that the warming waters are caused by human-made global warming and that needs to be fixed for coral to survive.
“If we do not reduce the greenhouse gas emissions we are emitting and don’t reduce the greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere, we are creating a world where coral reefs cannot exist, no matter what we do,” she said.
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Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Hundreds of divers and snorkelers listened to an underwater concert that advocated coral reef protection in the Florida Keys
In this photo provided by the Florida Keys News Bureau, Kristen Livengood, left, pretends to sing underwater, Saturday, July 8, 2023, at the Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary near Big Pine Key, Fla. Several hundred divers and snorkelers submerged along a portion of the continental United States’ only living coral barrier reef to listen to a local radio station’s four-hour broadcast, piped beneath the sea to promote coral reef preservation. (Frazier Nivens/Florida Keys News Bureau via AP)
The Associated Press
BIG PINE KEY, Fla. — Hundreds of divers and snorkelers listened to an underwater concert that advocated coral reef protection Saturday in the Florida Keys.
The Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival, which also spotlighted eco-conscious diving, took place at Looe Key Reef, an area of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary located about 6 miles (10 kilometers) south of Big Pine Key.
Established in 1990, the sanctuary protects 3,800 square miles (9,800 square kilometers) of waters including the barrier reef that parallels the 125-mile-long (201-kilometer-long) island chain.
Participants swam among Looe Key’s colorful marine life and coral formations while listening to water-themed music broadcast by a local radio station. The music was piped undersea through waterproof speakers suspended beneath boats above the reef.
The oceanic playlist included the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Fins” and the theme from “The Little Mermaid.”
Tunes were interspersed with diver awareness messages about ways to minimize environmental impacts on the world’s coral reefs, whose rich biodiversity has led them to be called the rainforests of the sea.
While the festival’s primary purpose was to encourage reef preservation, it also afforded a singular underwater experience. “Mermaids” and other costumed characters added unique visual elements to the auditory offering on part of the continental United States’ only living coral barrier reef.
The four-hour musical event was staged by local radio station 104.1 FM and the Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s environmental regulator refused on Wednesday to grant a license for a controversial offshore oil drilling project near the mouth of the Amazon River, prompting celebration from environmentalists who had warned of its potential impact.
The decision to reject the state-run oil company Petrobras’ request to drill the FZA-M-59 block was made “as a function of a group of technical inconsistencies,” said the agency’s president, Rodrigo Agostinho, who highlighted environmental concerns.
With Brazil’s existing production set to peak in coming years, Petrobras has sought to secure more reserves off Brazil’s northern coast. The company earmarked almost half its five-year, $6 billion exploration budget for the area.
CEO Jean Paul Prates had said that the first well would be temporary and that the company has never recorded a leak in offshore drilling. The company failed to convince the environmental agency.
“There is no doubt that Petrobras was offered every opportunity to remedy critical points of its project, but that it still presents worrisome inconsistencies for the safe operation in a new exploratory frontier with high socioenvironmental vulnerability,” Agostinho wrote in his decision.
The unique and biodiverse area is home to little-studied swaths of mangroves and a coral reef, and activists and experts had said the project risked leaks that could imperil the sensitive environment.
Eighty civil society and environmental organizations, including WWF Brasil and Greenpeace, had called for the license to be rejected pending an in-depth study.
“Agostinho is protecting a virtually unknown ecosystem and maintains the coherence of the Lula government, which has promised in its discourse to be guided by the fight against the climate crisis,” the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental non-profits, said in a statement.
During the first presidential terms of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from 2003 to 2010, huge offshore discoveries became a means of financing health, education and welfare programs. Some members of his Workers’ Party continue to see oil as a means to ensure social progress.
Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira said in March that the area is the “passport to the future” for development in Brazil’s northern region. In his prior terms, Lula used the same phrase to describe the offshore oil discoveries in an area known as pre-salt.
But Lula has strived to demonstrate the environmental awakening he has undergone in the years since, with protection of the Amazon a fixture in his campaign last year to unseat Jair Bolsonaro and return to the presidency.
Activists and experts had warned that approval for the offshore oil project could threaten the natural world, but also dent Lula’s newfound image as an environmental defender.
The process to obtain an environmental license for the FZA-M-59 block began in 2014, at the request of BP Energy do Brasil. Exploration rights were transferred to Petrobras in 2020.
Suely Araújo, a former head of the environment agency and now a public policy specialist with the Climate Observatory, said Agostinho made the right call not just for the specific project, but also for the nation.
“The decision in this case gives cause for a broader debate about the role of oil in the country’s future. It is time to establish a calendar to eliminate fossil fuels and accelerate the just transition for oil exporting countries, such as Brazil, and not open a new exploration frontier,” Araújo said in a statement. “Those who sleep today dreaming of oil wealth tend to wake up tomorrow with a stranded asset, or an ecological disaster, or both.”
Other controversial megaprojects in the Amazon that remain on the table include repaving a highway that would slice through preserved rainforest, construction of a major railway for grain transport and renewal of a giant hydroelectric dam’s license.
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Associated Press writer Eléonore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s environment minister said Tuesday her government will lobby against UNESCO adding the Great Barrier Reef to a list of endangered World Heritage sites.
Officials from the U.N. cultural agency and the International Union for Conservation of Nature released a report on Monday warning that without “ambitious, rapid and sustained” climate action, the world’s largest coral reef is in peril.
The report, which recommended shifting the Great Barrier Reef to endangered status, followed a 10-day mission in March to the famed reef system off Australia’s northeast coast that was added to the World Heritage list in 1981.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the report was a reflection on Australia’s previous conservative government, which was voted out of office in May elections after nine years in power.
She said the new center-left Labor Party government has already addressed several of the report’s concerns, including action on climate change.
“We’ll very clearly make the point to UNESCO that there is no need to single the Great Barrier Reef out in this way” with an endangered listing, Plibersek told reporters.
“The reason that UNESCO in the past has singled out a place as at risk is because they wanted to see greater government investment or greater government action and, since the change of government, both of those things have happened,” she added.
The new government has legislated to commit Australia to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below the 2005 level by 2030.
The previous government only committed to a reduction of 26% to 28% by the end of the decade.
Plibersek said her government has also committed 1.2 billion Australian dollars ($798 million) to caring for the reef and has canceled the previous government’s plans to build two major dams in Queensland state that would have affected the reef’s water quality.
“If the Great Barrier Reef is in danger, then every coral reef in the world is in danger,” Plibersek said. “If this World Heritage site is in danger, then most World Heritage sites around the world are in danger from climate change.”
The report said Australia’s federal government and Queensland authorities should adopt more ambitious emission reduction targets in line with international efforts to limit future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.
The minor Greens party, which wants Australia to slash its emissions by 75% by the end of the decade, called for the government to do more to fight climate change in light of the report.
Jodie Rummer, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Townville who has worked on the reef for more than a decade, supported calls for Australia to aim for a 75% emissions reduction.
“We are taking action, but that action needs to be much more rapid and much more urgent,” Rummer told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“We cannot claim to be doing all we can for the reef at this point. We aren’t. We need to be sending that message to the rest of the world that we are doing everything that we possibly can for the reef and that means we need to take urgent action on emissions immediately,” she added.
Feedback from Australian officials, both at the federal and state level, will be reviewed before Paris-based UNESCO makes any official proposal to the World Heritage committee.
In July last year, the previous Australian government garnered enough international support to defer an attempt by UNESCO to downgrade the reef’s status to “in danger” because of damage caused by climate change.
The Great Barrier Reef accounts for around 10% of the world’s coral reef ecosystems. The network of more than 2,500 reefs covers 348,000 square kilometers (134,000 square miles).
Australian government scientists reported in May that more than 90% of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed in the latest year was bleached, in the fourth such mass event in seven years.
Bleaching is caused by global warming, but this is the reef’s first bleaching event during a La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with cooler Pacific Ocean temperatures, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority said in its annual report.
Bleaching in 2016, 2017 and 2020 damaged two-thirds of the coral.
Coral bleaches as a response to heat stress and scientists hope most of the coral will recover from the latest event.
KONOMIE ISLAND, Australia — Below the turquoise waters off the coast of Australia is one of the world’s natural wonders, an underwater rainbow jungle teeming with life that scientists say is showing some of the clearest signs yet of climate change.
The Great Barrier Reef, battered but not broken by climate change impacts, is inspiring hope and worry alike as researchers race to understand how it can survive a warming world. Authorities are trying to buy the reef time by combining ancient knowledge with new technology. They are studying coral reproduction in hopes to accelerate regrowth and adapt it to handle hotter and rougher seas.
Underwater heat waves and cyclones driven in part by runaway greenhouse gas emissions have devastated some of the 3,000 coral reefs making up the Great Barrier Reef. Pollution fouls its waters, and outbreaks of crown of thorns starfish have ravaged its corals.
Researchers say climate change is already challenging the vibrant marine superstructure and all that depend upon it — and that more destruction is to come.
“This is a clear climate change signal. It’s going to happen again and again,” said Anne Hoggett, director of the Lizard Island Research Station, on the continuing damage to the reef from stronger storms and marine heat waves. “It’s going to be a rollercoaster.”
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RELATED: Damage and regrowth on the Great Barrier Reef
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Billions of microscopic animals called polyps have built this breathtaking 1,400-mile long colossus that is visible from space and perhaps a million years old. It is home to thousands of known plant and animal species and boasts a $6.4 billion annual tourism industry.
“The corals are the engineers. They build shelter and food for countless animals,” said Mike Emslie, head of the Long-Term Monitoring Program of the reef at the Australian Institute for Marine Science.
Emslie’s team have seen disasters get bigger, and hit more and more frequently over 37 years of underwater surveys.
Heat waves in recent years drove corals to expel countless tiny organisms that power the reefs through photosynthesis, causing branches to lose their color or “bleach.” Without these algae, corals don’t grow, can become brittle, and provide less for the nearly 9,000 reef-dependent species. Cyclones in the past dozen years smashed acres of corals. Each of these were historic catastrophes in their own right, but without time to recover between events, the reef couldn’t regrow.
In the last heat wave however, Emslie’s team at AIMS noticed new corals sprouting up faster than expected.
“The reef is not dead,” he said. “It is an amazing, beautiful, complex, and remarkable system that has the ability to recover if it gets a chance – and the best way we can give it a chance is by cutting carbon emissions.”
The first step in the government’s reef restoration plan is to understand better the enigmatic life cycle of the coral itself.
For that, dozens of Australian researchers take to the seas across the reef when conditions are ripe for reproduction in a spawning event that is the only time each year when coral polyps naturally reproduce as winter warms into spring.
But scientists say that is too slow if corals are to survive global warming. So they don scuba gear to gather coral eggs and sperm during the spawning. Back in labs, they test ways to speed up corals’ reproductive cycle and boost genes that survive higher temperatures.
One such lab, a ferry retrofitted into a “sci-barge”, floats off the coast of Konomie Island, also known as North Keppel Island, a two-hour boat ride from the mainland in Queensland state.
One recent blustery afternoon, Carly Randall, who heads the AIMS coral restoration program, stood amidst buckets filled with coral specimens and experimental coral-planting technologies. She said the long-term plan is to grow “tens to hundreds of millions” of baby corals every year and plant them across the reef.
Randall compared it to tree-planting with drones but underwater.
Her colleagues at AIMS have successfully bred corals in a lab off-season, a crucial first step in being able to at scale introduce genetic adaptions like heat-resistance.
Engineers are designing robots to fit in a mothership that would deploy underwater drones. Those drones would attach genetically-selected corals to the reef with boomerang-shaped clips. Corals in specific targets will enhance the reef’s “natural recovery processes” which would eventually “overtake the work that we’ve been doing to keep it going through climate change,” she said.
Australia has recently been slammed by historic wildfires, floods, and cyclones exacerbated by climate instability.
That has driven a political shift in the country as voters have grown more concerned with climate change, helping sweep in new national leadership in this year’s federal elections, said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics.
The nation’s previous prime minister, Scott Morrison, was a conservative who was chided for minimizing the need to address climate change.
The new center-left government of Anthony Albanese passed legislation to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and includes 43% green house gas reductions by 2030. Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquefied natural gas, and lags behind major industrial countries’ emission targets.
The new government has blocked a coal plant from being opened near the Great Barrier Reef, yet recently allowed other coal plants new permits.
It is also continuing investment to boost the reef’s natural ability to adapt to rapidly warming climate.
The Italy-sized reef is managed like a national park by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
GBRMPA chief scientist David Wachenfeld said that “despite recent impacts from climate change, the Great Barrier Reef is still a vast, diverse, beautiful and resilient ecosystem.”
However, that is today, in a world warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).
“As we approach two degrees (Celsius) and certainly as we pass it, we will lose the world’s coral reefs and all the benefits that they give to humanity,” Wachenfeld said. He added that as home to over 30% of marine biodiversity, coral reefs are essential for the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people all over the tropics.
The reef is “part of the national identity of Australians and of enormous spiritual and cultural significance for our First Nations people,” Wachenfeld said.
After long mistreatment and neglect by the federal government, Indigenous groups now have a growing role in management of the reef. The government seeks their permission for projects there and hires from the communities to study and repair it.
Multiple members of the Yirrganydji and Gunggandji communities work as guides, sea rangers and researchers on reef protection and restoration projects.
After scuba diving through turquoise waters teeming with fish and vibrant corals, Tarquin Singleton said his people hold memories more than 60,000 years old of this “sea country” — including previous climatic changes.
“That connection is ingrained in our DNA,” said Singleton, who is from the Yirrganydji people native to the area around Cairns. He now works as a cultural officer with Reef Cooperative, a joint venture of tourism agencies, the government and Indigenous groups.
“Utilizing that today can actually preserve what we have for future generations.”
The Woppaburra people native to Konomie and Woppa islands barely survived Australian colonization. Now they’re forging a new kind of unity “in a way that wouldn’t happen normally” by sharing ancient oral histories and working on research vessels, said Bob Muir, an Indigenous elder working as a community liaison with AIMS.
For now, reef-wide farming and planting corals is plausible science fiction. It’s too expensive now to scale up to levels needed to “buy the reef time” as humanity cuts emissions, Randall said.
But she said that within 10 to 15 years the drones could be in the water.
But Randall warns that robots, coral farms and skilled divers “will absolutely not work if we don’t get emissions under control.”
“This is one of many tools in the toolkit being developed,” she said. “But unless we can get emissions under control, we don’t have much hope for the reef ecosystem.”
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment and Sam McNeil on Twitter @stmcneil
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
PENYABANGAN, Indonesia — It took a broken air conditioner for Tom Bowling to figure out — after nearly eight months of failure — how to breed the coveted pink-yellow tropical fish known as blotched anthias.
Bowling, an ornamental fish breeder based in Palau, had kept the fish in cool water, trying to replicate the temperatures the deep-water creatures are usually found in. But when the air conditioner broke the water temperature rose by a few degrees overnight — with surprising results. “They started spawning — they went crazy, laying eggs everywhere,” said Bowling.
Experts around the world tinker over water temperature, futz with lights, and try various mixes of microscopic food particles in hopes of happening upon the particular and peculiar set of conditions that will inspire ornamental fish to breed. Experts hope to steer the aquarium fish trade away from wild-caught fish, which are often caught with poisons that can hurt coral ecosystems.
PROPER AMBIANCE REQUIRED
Most of the millions of glittering fish that dart around saltwater aquariums in the U.S., Europe, China and elsewhere are taken from coral reefs in the Philippines, Indonesia and other tropical countries.
Trappers often stun them using chemicals like cyanide. They are then transferred to middlemen and then flown across the globe, ending up in aquariums in homes, malls, restaurants and medical offices. Experts estimate “large percentages” die on the way.
Part of the problem: only about 4% of saltwater aquarium fish can be bred in captivity, largely because many have elaborate reproductive cycles and delicate early life stages that require sometimes mysterious conditions that scientists and breeders struggle to reproduce.
For decades experts have been working to unlock the secrets of marine fish breeding. Breakthroughs don’t come quickly, said Paul Andersen, head of the Coral Reef Aquarium Fisheries Campaign, which works to support sustainable coral reef aquarium fisheries.
“It requires years of investment, research and development, oftentimes to make incremental steps,” he said. And then even longer, he said, to bring newly captive-bred species to market.
The Moorish idol, a black-and-yellow striped fish with a mane-like dorsal fin spine, requires lots of space. Squiggle-striped green mandarins prefer to spawn just before the sun sets, requiring very particular lighting cycles to breed in captivity. As Bowling discovered in Palau, blotched anthias require very specific temperatures.
“You’ve got to pay attention to all the parameters that will make a fish happy,” said Andersen. “Some species are really gentle, delicate and sensitive to these kinds of things.”
FRAGILE EARLY DAYS
After fish spawn, breeders often find themselves facing the most challenging part of the process: the larval period, which is the time just after the fish hatches, before it develops into a juvenile. The flow of water has to be just right, but they are so fragile they have to be protected from filters and even tank walls.
The first feeding is also crucial, said Andrew Rhyne, a marine biology professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. During the first days many larval fish don’t have eyes or mouths, instead living off their yolk.
“When they finally do form eyes or mouths it’s so important to have created an environment that allows them to get a first bite of zooplankton so they can get a little stronger and continue to grow,” said Rhyne. “That’s kind of been the magic for all of this.”
Often that first bite is a critical part of the ocean food system that harbors its own mysteries: called copepods, they are microscopic crustaceans that provide vital nutrients to larval fish and are key for breeders around the world.
At the University of Florida Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory in Ruskin — where the blue tang “Dory” fish popularized by the movie Finding Nemo was successfully bred for the first time — associate professor Matt DiMaggio and his students have been working to produce copepods. But even the copepods haven proven to be difficult to raise.
Mort than 10,000 miles away from the Florida lab, on the tropical northern coast of Bali, Indonesia, renowned fish breeder Wen-Ping Su walks between large cement fish tanks, his own zooplankton recipe churning in a circular tank nearby.
Su said he has 10 different keys to success that he’s been developing for nearly two decades. Those keys have enabled him to breed fish that no one else has, including striped regal angelfish and frilly black-bodied, orange-rimmed pinnatus batfish.
VALUABLE SECRETS
But asking Wen-Ping Su if he’ll share details, his answer comes quickly, with his hands crossing to form an X in front of his big smile: “No.”
It’s the same sentiment echoed by Bowling, who pauses when asked about sharing the secrets to his most high-profile successes. “That’s the part I really don’t want to tell you,” he laughs.
Those secrets are their livelihoods. The blotched anthias Bowling bred after the broken air conditioner are listed for $700 on his company’s website. Fish bred by Su also sell for hundreds of dollars online.
But in the past five years there are some organizations — such as Rising Tide Conservation, a non-governmental organization dedicated to developing and promoting aquaculture — that have worked to promote information sharing, said DiMaggio.
“That’s helped to accelerate the number of species that we’ve been able to raise in during that time and the variety of species too,” he said, highlighting species such as wrasses, butterflyfish and tangs.
Rhyne’s research lab — which includes breeding toothy queen triggerfish and red-striped yasha gobies— has been working to share his research with breeders as well.
But Rhyne and other breeders concede that it’s unlikely all aquarium fish will be raised in captivity because some are just too difficult, while others are so abundant in nature.
And breeding a fish doesn’t guarantee it will make it to or do well on the market, said Rhyne. Captive bred fish cost more, and experts in the fish industry recognize that it will take time to convince consumers should pay more for them.
“How do we market aquaculture fish the way that we market organic foods, you know, and demand that premium price point?” said Andersen, from the Coral Reef Aquarium Fisheries Campaign. “The marketing is really important.”
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Associated Press video journalist Marshall Ritzel reported from Florida. Kathy Young contributed to this report from New York. Andi Jatmiko, Edna Tarigan and Tatan Syuflana contributed from Indonesia.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
LES, Indonesia — After diving into the warm sea off the coast of northern Bali, Indonesia, Made Partiana hovers above a bed of coral, holding his breath and scanning for flashes of color and movement. Hours later, exhausted, he returns to a rocky beach, towing plastic bags filled with his darting, exquisite quarry: tropical fish of all shades and shapes.
Millions of saltwater fish like these are caught in Indonesia and other countries every year to fill ever more elaborate aquariums in living rooms, waiting rooms and restaurants around the world with vivid, otherworldly life.
“It’s just so much fun to just watch the antics between different varieties of fish,” said Jack Siravo, a Rhode Island fish enthusiast who began building aquariums after an accident paralyzed him and now has four saltwater tanks. He calls the fish “an endless source of fascination.”
But the long journey from places like Bali to places like Rhode Island is perilous for the fish and for the reefs they come from. Some are captured using squirts of cyanide to stun them. Many die along the way.
And even when they are captured carefully, by people like Partiana, experts say the global demand for these fish is contributing to the degradation of delicate coral ecosystems, especially in major export countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines.
There have been efforts to reduce some of the most destructive practices, such as cyanide fishing. But the trade is extraordinarily difficult to regulate and track as it stretches from small-scale fishermen in tropical seaside villages through local middlemen, export warehouses, international trade hubs and finally to pet stores in the U.S., China, Europe and elsewhere.
“There’s no enforcement, no management, no data collection,” said Gayatri Reksodihardjo-Lilley, founder of LINI, a Bali-based nonprofit for the conservation and management of coastal marine resources.
That leaves enthusiasts like Siravo in the dark.
“Consumers often don’t know where their fish are coming from, and they don’t know how they are collected,” said Andrew Rhyne, a marine biology professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.
STUNNED BY CYANIDE
Most ornamental saltwater fish species are caught in the wild because breeding them in captivity can be expensive, difficult and often impossible. The conditions they need to reproduce are extremely particular and poorly understood, even by scientists and expert breeders who have been trying for years.
Small-scale collection and export of saltwater aquarium fish began in Sri Lanka in the 1930s and the trade has grown steadily since. Nearly 3 million homes in the U.S. keep saltwater fish as pets, according to a 2021-2022 American Pet Products Association survey. (Freshwater aquariums are far more common because freshwater fish are generally cheaper and easier to breed and care for.) About 7.6 million saltwater fish are imported into the U.S. every year.
For decades, a common fishing technique has involved cyanide, with dire consequences for fish and marine ecosystems.
Fishermen crush the blue or white pellets into a bottle filled with water. The diluted cyanide forms a poisonous mixture fishermen squirt onto coral reefs, where fish usually hide in crevices. The fish become temporarily stunned, allowing fishermen to easily pick or scoop them from the coral.
Many die in transit, weakened by the cyanide – which means even more fish need to be captured to meet demand. The chemicals damage the living coral and make it more difficult for new coral to grow.
LAX ENFORCEMENT
Cyanide fishing has been banned in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines but enforcement of the law remains difficult, and experts say the practice continues.
Part of the problem is geography, Reksodihardjo-Lilley explains. In the vast archipelago of Indonesia, there are about 34,000 miles (54,720 kilometers) of coastline across some 17,500 islands. That makes monitoring the first step of the tropical fish supply chain a task so gargantuan it is all but ignored.
“We have been working at the national level, trying to push national government to give attention to ornamental fish in Indonesia, but it’s fallen on deaf ears,” she said.
Indonesian officials counter that laws do exist that require exporters to meet quality, sustainability, traceability and animal welfare conditions. “We will arrest anyone who implements destructive fishing. There are punishments for it,” said Machmud, an official at Indonesia’s marine affairs and fisheries ministry, who uses only one name.
“NO REAL RECORD-KEEPING”
Another obstacle to monitoring and regulating of the trade is the quick pace that the fish can move from one location to another, making it difficult to trace their origins.
At a fish export warehouse in Denpasar, thousands of fish a day can be delivered to the big industrial-style facility located off a main road in Bali’s largest city. Trucks and motorbikes arrive with white Styrofoam coolers crammed with plastic bags of fish from around the archipelago. The fish are swiftly unpacked, sorted into tanks or new plastic bags and given fresh sea water. Carcasses of ones that died in transit are tossed into a basket or onto the pavement, then later thrown in the trash.
Some fish will remain in small rectangular tanks in the warehouse for weeks, while others are shipped out quickly in plastic bags in cardboard boxes, fulfilling orders from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. According to data provided to The Associated Press by Indonesian government officials, the U.S. was the largest importer of saltwater aquarium fish from the country.
Once the fish make the plane ride halfway around the world from Indonesia to the U.S., they’re checked by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which cross-references the shipment with customs declaration forms.
But that’s designed to ensure no protected fish, such as the endangered Banggai Cardinal, are being imported. The process cannot determine if the fish were caught legally.
A U.S. law known as the Lacey Act bans trafficking in fish, wildlife, or plants that were illegally taken, possessed, transported, or sold – according to the laws in the country of origin or sale. That means that any fish caught using cyanide in a country where it’s prohibited would be illegal to import or sell in the U.S.
But that helps little when it’s impossible to tell how the fish was caught. For example, no test exists to provide accurate results on whether a fish has been caught with cyanide, said Rhyne, the Roger Williams marine biology expert.
“The reality is that the Lacey Act isn’t used often because generally there’s no real record-keeping or way to enforce it,” said Rhyne.
LOCAL RESPONSE
In the absence of rigorous national enforcement, conservation groups and local fishermen have long been working to reduce cyanide fishing in places like Les, a well-known saltwater aquarium fishing town tucked between the mountains and ocean in northern Bali.
Partiana started catching fish – using cyanide — shortly after elementary school, when his parents could no longer afford to pay for his education. Every catch would help provide a few dollars of income for his family.
But over the years Partiana began to notice the reef was changing. “I saw the reef dying, turning black,” he said. “You could see there were less fish.”
He became part of a group of local fishermen who were taught by a local conservation organization how to use nets, care for the reef and patrol the area to guard against cyanide use. He later became a lead trainer for the organization, and has trained more than 200 fellow aquarium fishermen across Indonesia in use of less harmful techniques.
Reksodihardjo-Lilley says it this type of local education and training that should be expanded to reduce harmful fishing. “People can see that they’re directly benefitting from the reefs being in good health.”
For Partiana, now the father of two children, it’s not just for his benefit. “I hope that (healthier) coral reefs will make it possible for the next generation of children and grandchildren under me,” He wants them to be able to “see what coral looks like and that there can be ornamental fish in the sea.”
A world away in Rhode Island, Siravo, the fish enthusiast, shares Partiana’s hopes for a less distructive saltwater aquarium industry.
“I don’t want fish that are not collected sustainably,” he says. “Because I won’t be able to get fish tomorrow if I buy (unsustainably caught fish) today.”
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Associated Press video journalist Kathy Young reported from New York. Marshall Ritzel contributed to this report from Rhode Island. Edna Tarigan contributed from Jakarta.
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Follow Victoria Milko on Twitter: @thevmilko
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
SYDNEY, November 14, 2017 (Newswire.com)
– For the first time since 2014, the far reaches of the unexplored areas of the Great Barrier Reef will be explored and studied by the “Search for the Corals Expedition”. A project conceived by Australian organisation Great Barrier Reef Legacy (GBRL) and funded under the generous public donations, Northern Escape Collections, project partners and small business champions like Deep Blue Digital, this project is making it possible for this important scientific research to be collected.
The GBRL’s unprecedented efforts to offer scientists the opportunity to study the health of the remote far northern stretches of the Great Barrier Reef has rallied large and small businesses to the side of environmental concerns in order to sponsor this non-profit organisation’s purpose in helping scientists discover how particular species of corals are surviving in the wake of a severe bleaching episodes over the past two years.
The minute I heard about this expedition, which is the first stage of a long-term effort to save the reef, I knew I had to be involved. I signed up immediately and am proud to have my company help lead this pioneering excursion by being formally acknowledged as a supporter.
Sarah Ambler, Director
“The minute I heard about this expedition, which is the first stage of a long-term effort to save the reef, I knew I had to be involved,” says Sarah Ambler, Director and Founder of Deep Blue Digital, a tourism marketing agency. “I signed up immediately and am proud to have my company help lead this pioneering excursion by being formally acknowledged as a supporter.” Deep Blue Digital is proudly a “Small Business Champion” alongside many other Australian and international companies.
The Great Barrier Reef is unfortunately facing a precarious future. Last year, data collected from aerial surveys reported a staggering mortality of 29% for shallow water corals. Furthermore, this year has already produced an unsettling mortality figure of 20 percent — in other words, in only two years the reef has seen a loss of half its coral.
Taking heed of this and as part of their CSR initiatives, Deep Blue Digital is supplying expert digital marketing support to help raise the awareness of this expedition as well as the necessary funding and sponsorship from corporate companies and all persons interested for the furthering of GBRL’s efforts in the future.
“The response has been overwhelming,” says John Rumney, managing director of GBRL. “For me, it has been my lifelong desire for scientists and researchers to help protect the reef and study the far north of the Great Barrier Reef’s ‘super corals’ and supporting science for solutions.”
According to Rumney, some species of corals are able to tolerate higher temperatures and are thus more resistant to bleaching. Understanding how they survive will provide crucial information for scientists and policymakers as they try to ensure a future for reefs in a warming world.
Fortunately, with companies like Deep Blue Digital, whose role is pivotal in providing free support in two distinct methods and which other companies throughout Australia have recognised as being important, GBRL is able to share cutting-edge research findings and awareness.
“We provide free online marketing, consulting and social media marketing to GBRL,” says Ambler, adding, “We’re very proud also to be active participants in the process of sharing content published by GBRL and other news agencies to help spread the word about such an important cause and working towards a science for solutions.”
John Rumney concluded by saying that digital marketing companies like Deep Blue Digital are vital to GBRL’s efforts, speaking of the Australian digital agency’s expertise and connections, which are, as Rumney put it, “… indispensable for the need to expand our reach for this ongoing campaign and research for the future of the world’s coral reefs.”
For more information or to offer a donation to the organisation, please visit their website: www.greatbarrierreeflegacy.org.
Issued by Deep Blue Digital — a digital marketing agency dedicated to helping travel and tourism businesses improve their online marketing to attract customers, increase bookings and grow. For more information, please visit https://deepbluedigitalmarketing.com or contact Sarah Ambler via email info@deepbluedigitalmarketing.com.
