Our Reef’s already in crisis, why are we still letting hundreds of tonnes of it be shipped overseas?
Right now, coral is being chipped off the Great Barrier Reef piece by piece — a World Heritage Area already reeling from repeated mass bleaching events — with the vast majority exported to overseas aquarium markets.
These are the same vibrant, living corals struggling to survive the impacts of climate change, while damaging cyclones and floods are becoming more frequent and severe.
As the Reef faces escalating pressure, some of the healthiest corals are being taken from the wild and sold into the global aquarium trade. This is happening inside a World Heritage Area, and it’s putting the Reef’s resilience at risk.
This is happening with little public scrutiny from an ecosystem that has suffered six mass bleaching events in just nine years.
Our new campaign is about to launch, calling on the Federal Government to transition the Queensland Coral Fishery away from wild harvest and into aquaculture, where corals are grown in tanks, not taken from the wild.
Did You Know?
- Corals are being chipped off the Great Barrier Reef piece by piece with hammers and chisels, even in areas already hit hard by mass bleaching.
- Most of these wild corals aren’t sold in Australia; they’re exported overseas: to North America, Europe and Asia.¹
- Up to 190 tonnes of coral can be harvested from the Reef each year, including rare and brightly coloured species found nowhere else on Earth.²
- The Queensland Coral Fishery’s harvest limits are primarily based on historical catch records, rather than on contemporary ecological assessments of coral reef health or sustainability.³
- The very same corals struggling to survive climate change are still being taken from the wild, weakening the Reef’s ability to recover.
- While a voluntary code of conduct exists for coral harvesting during major disturbance events, such as bleaching, there is no public information on how widely it is implemented, what actions are taken, or how many operators follow it.
- The Reef Authority says fishing impacts on coral should be “minimised to the greatest extent possible”⁴, yet participation in the coral fishery and the number of corals taken have increased in recent years.³
Sign up now to be the first to hear more when this campaign launches. We’ll keep you updated, share the inside story, and invite you to take action when the time comes.
Together, we can help protect the Reef and its incredible corals for future generations.
References:
- MacIntyre, R., & Roelofs, A. (2021). Scoping study of the Queensland Coral Fishery. Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.
- Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. (2024). Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report 2024.
- Expert advice for the assessment of Australian coral fisheries – Queensland Coral Fishery 2006-2007 to 2019-2020, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE), Wildlife Trade Assessments Section of the Wildlife Trade Office, Canberra, 2021
- Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority 2024, Position Statement on Sustainable Fisheries, Reef Authority, Townsville.
Header image: Heathcote, A. (2025, May 10). Queensland coral harvesting is big business. Some scientists are calling for a ‘rethink’. ABC News