DIVE HAPPY

There are a lot of dire warnings about global warming - and Tim Flannery's book The Weather Makers predicts that the Great Barrier Reef might die off due to the oceans heating up within the next 50 years

I've just got hold of respected Australian scientist Tim Flannery's latest book The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing The Climate And What It Means For Life On Earth. Browsing the contents page, I found there was a whole chapter dedicated to the Great Barrier Reef - and it made for terrifying reading.

To say the Barrier Reef will be dead in 50 years is an exaggeration - but not much. Certainly pretty much all the marine life that scuba divers care about will be dead if the current impact of global warming on the oceans continues over the next 5 decades. Flannery reckons that

"Only 50 of the 400 species of hard carol currently inhabiting the reef complex are likely to have adapted to [warmer waters] ...and almost all of these heat-hardy species are lumpy, rock-like forms or thick, sturdy types. Not only are such corals relatively unattractive, but they do not form the labyrithine structures so necessary in the reef's biodiversity. It is hard to believe that anything more than a small proportion of the reef's creatures could survive this transformation . So, in effect, visitors traveling to Queensland by 2050 may see the Great Stumpy Reef."

Scary stuff. Especially as all localised efforts at reef maintenance and protection are essentially piecemeal in the face of the greater, global threat of the warming oceans. The need for international action with regards to pollution and emissions is ever more apparent.