By John Mikkelsen
It’s a living thing, what a terrible thing to lose….
When the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) recorded their big hit back in the ‘70s they could have been referring to the Great Barrier Reef, although frontman Jeff Lynne insists it was really just about lost love.
The fate of our greatest natural wonder remains a hot topic here and overseas but if the climate change doomsayers were correct with their monotonous predictions, it would have been dead many years ago. Unfortunately, some potential overseas visitors are under the impression that it is in fact dead or dying, thanks to misinformed proclamations by some group-think scientists and even former US President Barack Obama when he visited Australia back in 2014.
https://theconversation.com/obama-protect-barrier-reef-from-climate-change-34278
Obama in his usual slow-talking drawl told a mainly youthful audience at the University of Queensland that “the incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened…”
He said he did not have time to go to the Reef then but, “I want to come back, and I want my daughters to be able to come back, and I want them to be able to bring their daughters or sons to visit. And I want that there 50 years from now.”
We haven’t seen Obama make a return visit to see for himself that the Reef is still there and I imagine he might have his hands full dealing with the latest alarming revelations by United States Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about election interference during his term. (She has claimed there is firm evidence of fabricated reports by senior security officials about alleged Russian collusion on behalf of Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential campaign.)
The fate of the Reef is back in the headlines again after the latest report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) which some climate catastrophists and media sycophants have seized on. It claims hard coral cover has declined significantly across the Great Barrier Reef, following a record bleaching event in 2024.
Cyclones, associated flooding, and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish have reportedly compounded the impacts, with record coral losses in both the northern and southern regions.
It says the Reef retains higher levels of coral than most others around the world, but faces a “volatile” future. However, the report also states that while coral losses were significant, they came off a high base, with observed coral cover now sitting at “near to long-term average levels”.
Oops. I hope Barack is following this and I hope he also reads a recent report in The Australian by scientist Dr Peter Ridd, who had his tenure with James Cook University terminated in 2018. His sacking stemmed from critical comments he made about colleagues and Reef researchers which allegedly breached its code of conduct.
But that hasn’t silenced him by any means. Dr Ridd said the latest 2025 statistics on the amount of coral on the Great Barrier Reef show “the reef is still doing fine despite having six allegedly cataclysmic coral bleaching events in the last decade. There should be no coral at all if those reports were true.
“The normalised coral cover dropped from a record high number of 0.36 down to 0.29, but there is still twice as much coral as in 2012. The raw coral cover number for all the last five years has been higher than any of the previous years since records began in 1985…
“Analysis of the data at smaller scales shows the GBR is doing what it always does – change. “There is a constant dynamic as cyclones, starfish plagues and bleaching events dramatically kill lots of coral in small areas, while it quietly regrows elsewhere…
“The institutions often justify this embarrassingly high coral cover as just “weed coral”. But the type of coral that has exploded over the past few years is acropora, which is the most susceptible to hot-water bleaching. How can we have record amounts of the type of coral that should have been killed, again and again, from bleaching? The acropora takes five to 10 years to regrow if it is killed.
“There are two conclusions that must be drawn. First, not much coral has been killed by climate change bleaching – at least not compared to the capacity of coral to regrow. Second, the science institutions are not entirely trustworthy, and are in need of major reform.
Amen from me.
The article in The Australian is accompanied by a beautiful photo of vibrant healthy coral, which even Barack Obama might like. But it is another image on the AIMS website of a diver clinging to a “manta board” that set my mind in its version of Dr Who’s TARDIS back to the mid ‘70s when I was on a reporting assignment to a famous international Reef destination at Heron Island off Gladstone in Central Queensland.
The “assignment” was one I gave myself as editor of the Gladstone Observer, partly because I liked to be involved in our news coverage but probably more because I loved the Reef and have done ever since excursions as a teenage snorkeler and spearfisherman off various coral atolls that dot its 2,300 km stretch from north Queensland to Lady Elliot Island in the south.
This time I was meeting up with some officials from the fledgling Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and some international scientists conducting coral studies at the Heron Island Research Station, which shares space on the atoll with the international tourist resort.
They invited me onboard a vessel engaged in the research by towing a diver with a manta board behind the boat. And incredible as it may seem with today’s strictly governed workplace safety rules and official red tape, when I mentioned my earlier diving experience, they asked if I would like to try my hand at manta boarding.
Would I? You betcha!
Some basic instructions – press down on the front to dive, press down on the back to rise, just let go and rise to the surface if in any difficulty, then I was over the side and cruising along over an abundance of lovely plate corals, staghorns, soft corals and a plethora of marine life including some turtles wondering what this weird interloper was.
Diving down among the fish, swallowing to equalise ear pressures, then zooming back up to the surface, it sure beat the normal dive progress.
Finally, back on the boat I was towelling myself when the skipper nonchalantly asked, “Did you see any sharks?”
“Yes, just a few small ‘Reefies’ checking me out from a distance.”
“That’s good but we did see a White Pointer out here a few days ago…”
Now he tells me! I could have been live bait, but as the old saying goes, what you don’t know won’t hurt you.
I made it back to the mainland and the newspaper office unscathed and for any Doubting Thomases out there, I dutifully wrote a report of my experience which featured on an Observer front page and would still be in some old file from back in the day.
And thankfully, I’m very optimistic that the Great Barrier Reef will still be surviving and thriving long after Barack Obama and any of today’s climate doomsayers have gone to a better place.
John Mikkelsen is a former editor of three Queensland regional newspapers, columnist, freelance writer and author of the Amazon Books Memoir, Don’t Call Me Nev. (https://www.amazon.com.au/Dont-Call-Nev-John-Mikkelsen/dp/B09S244GP1/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?
Nothing wrong with The Barrier Reef.
Jennifer Marohasy is Queensland’s very own scientist who has dived the reef.
First hand evidence. In the office and in the field.
Good story John, and yes the GBR is just one of the targets of climate alarmists whose regular predictions of impending doom due to CO2 emissions never eventuate so they just move the goal posts out a few more years. Geological records show sea levels in past eons were both much higher (marine fossils in Central Australia, limestone caves in former coral reefs hundreds of metres above current sea levels) and also much lower – down to the edge of the Continental Shelf off the current coastline.
Coral reefs have thrived in much hotter climates and with CO2 levels 10 times the current historically low levels (in geological terms) of about 0.04 percent but hey, let’s scare the kiddies and the gullible while throwing $$ billions at futile attempts to solve a non-problem.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) no longer considers CO2 a danger and I’ll add it never was as it is necessary for life.
They played humanity.
Wonder if @MarkJCarney will reimburse the Carbon Tax they stole from every Canadian? #ClimateChangeIsAHoax
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/what-they-are-saying-leaders-praise-epa-launching-largest-deregulatory-action-us
In 2019, when I was living in Cairns, I met German backpackers who told me that they wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef before it was too late. They were convinced that it was dying.
I tried to explain to them that it was all BS. A brief period with exceptionally low tides had exposed the top of the reef in some place and the sun had killed off the living creatures that give it its colour. They did not believe me. They blamed it on Global Warming. They were so brainwashed. 😊
Further to Terry’s comment –
many millions of dollars spent on the GBR so why isn’t gov spending some on toxicology? Test some of the damaged corals or dying polyps for chemicals, pharmaceuticals and while you’re at it: spike protein. Don’t forget the metals and sulfuric acid from that ‘non-existent’ geoengineering’ that ‘doesn’t’ take place right over the GBR.
Bleaching worst in northern and southern reefs? – you mean the reefs that received that wall of runoff from the Brisbane and FNQ major flooding events?
Very sad what has become of critical thinking in this country. The answers are right in front of our faces and yet people allow themselves to be blind.
The high function con man Paul Ehrlick is still predicting catastrophe to the masses of imbeciles who have not yet worked out that not a single one of his predictions has come to pass in more than forty years. He set the patten that all the other con men follow. Thankfully they seem never to run out of idiots.
NEXT THEY WILL WANT TO USE MRNA TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF A NON DYING REEF AND THAT WILL SURELY DO THE JOB OF KILLING IT OFF JUST LIKE WE HUMANS. OH, AND NOW COWS AS WELL.
We have been hearing about the dying GBR since we were wee little ones at our local indoctrination centres…Brings back memories. Memories of all the bullshit they told us.
So, tell me, those Who Don’t Question The Science, is the GBR still dying? IS IT DEAD YET? ARE WE THERE YET?
I’m off to save the reef then…I will need some grant money.
Bob Katter told everyone about 20 years ago the damaged areas of the reef were caused by runoff but it didn’t register with the mainstream. We are basically dealing with zombies. It doesn’t take much to hypnotize a chicken and Rockerfellas use the same principle. They have their main foundation and I think there are about 200 others. They just give a few people a “book deal” and suddenly feminism or anything else is born. A few sold out Greens and people like the WEF minion Sarah Hanson-Young are enough to wag the dog.
This is all part of a campaign to shift government money to selected individuals.
We can all shift towards solar panels on roofs and pumped hydro gradually and the only ones who will lose out are people like Baron S Hacca of Teals Party.
When I was in second class at school in the 70s we were taught that the crown of thorns Jelly fish was eating the coral in the Great Barrier Reef and in 10 years it would all be gone.
We were also taught that the earth was cooling and going into a new ice age and that we would all hafta move north because the South Pole would be in Vic/NSW and unable to grow food and there would be mass immigration here via new land bridges caused by thick ice sheets.
We were terrified until they flipped the switch to the global warming BS and we realised that
The Great Barrier Reef is still doing well 50years later.
We realised that almost everything that we were taught in govt schools was a lie and prepared us with no knowledge that we could use once we left.
I learned more in the 1st year that I left school than I did in the entire 12 agonising years of govt indoctrination.
Covid taught us that the entire establishment are lying genocidal whores who will do and say anything for a buck and to never believe anything they say if I want to stay alive.
Anything that dies at sea generally washes up on the beaches, has anyone seen the reef washed up?
It’s all Bull Shit, it’s a gravy train for the universities and the tourism industry.
I personally know of that 100 million some years ago that was to “save the reef” ( didn’t see people out there mopping it or placing tarps over the reef 🙈🤣🤣🤣) As I said Some of that money ended up in the hands of Cairns Tourism operators, like millions 🤔
The Cairns Tourism industry ( save the reef or eco Tourism) is no different to the Aboriginal industry.
Furthermore JCU university Cairns was supposedly out killing some of the world’s most poisonous see slugs and crown of thorns in and around the GBR, yell me if anyone can remember… was it dead body’s in Italy that apparently died from Covid had this same poison found in them?
The question is i gues was JCU university injecting crown of thorns, OR we’re they collecting crown of thorns?
I had a dingbat tell me about how the reef was dying from the warm waters of ‘global warming’. I told her that I had dove in much warmer waters than around the reef and they were booming with life. In fact, if she bothered to check she would find that the waters just North of the reef, closer to the equator, were even warmer than around the reef.
She seemed perplexed?? I told her that she likely needed more research into the run offs from the fertilized and chemical herbicides of the croplands that were fed into the rivers that reached the reef. – I doubt it even registered with her.
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