Home to swirling fish, colourful corals and ancient sea turtles, our magnificent Great Barrier Reef is vital to the health of Australia’s oceans.
The Reef is part of our world heritage and its beauty lifts our spirits. Spanning 2,300 kms along the Queensland coast, it can even be seen from space.
But our Great Barrier Reef’s future is threatened. The mining and burning of coal and gas is heating our planet and cooking our oceans, causing devastating mass coral bleaching. After an unprecedented three mass coral bleaching in just five years, climate change is here and now for the lives and livelihoods our Reef supports. Our Reef is still beautiful but we need urgent action on climate change to give it the best chance for the future. This means we cannot let giant mining corporations like Adani and Clive Palmer’s Central Queensland Coal dig for new coal right in our backyard.
Simultaneously, water pollution is damaging our Reef. Chemicals and sediment from land-based activities flows into waterways after rainfall and this pollution finds it way into Reef waters. Poor land-use practices like land clearing and the overuse of fertilisers causes an increase in sediment and nutrients in the Reef waters which can result in algal blooms, a buildup of pollutants and sediment and reduce light and smother seagrasses and corals.. We need to restore our Reef inshore waterways and limit the amount of chemicals like pesticide and fertilizer used on the land. A win-win for landowners and our Reef.
Our Reef’s ecosystem is also feeling the pressures of commercial and recreational fishing. The removal of top predators like sharks, can throw the delicate ecosystem out of balance. Many people are not aware that damaging fishing practices like gillnet and trawl fisheries operate in our Reef. These fisheries can impact fragile habitats and are responsible for the bycatch of endangered species. Massive gillnets are indiscriminate killers of iconic threatened species like dugongs, turtles, sawfish and dolphins.
Our Reef is feeling the pressure. But we know what we need to do. Together, we can call on our leaders and corporations to:
- Move away from dirty fossil fuels
- Clean up pollution that starts on the land then flows into our waters
- And create a fishing industry that doesn’t exploit our precious marine life.
Thousands of people are already taking action to Fight For Our Reef by writing to leaders, businesses and attending our community events. If we are loud – they will listen. Our leaders have a legal and moral responsibility to protect our Reef and together we will hold them to it.