Dying, but not dead: The Great Barrier Reef can still be saved

Social media is rife with unverified rumors hastily passed around and parody articles taken as fact. Sadly, science often becomes the unfortunate victim of these shenanigans.

Every once in a while, though, a combination of an eloquently written story that tugs at the heartstrings, trigger-happy fingers on social sharing buttons, and an apparent disregard for basic fact-checking protocol results in the transformation of a well-meaning wake-up call into an irresponsible hoax.

The Great Barrier Grief

A tongue-in-cheek mock obituary written by Rowan Jacobsen entitled “Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016)” recently spread like wildfire on social media sites, prompting online users and news sites such as The Sun, The New York Post, and The Indian Express to proclaim that the world’s largest living structure—a 1,400-mile system of coral polyps located off the coast of Queensland in Australia—had finally ceased to exist.

The piece, which was published on the Outside Magazine website on October 11, was written in the style of a typical obituary, with a brief examination of the Great Barrier Reef’s 25-million-year existence and a blow-by-blow account of the events that led to its alleged demise.

The obituary walks readers through how the Great Barrier Reef suffered through multiple “mass-bleaching” incidents. Corals thrive because of the symbiotic algae that live on them; these algae, called zooxanthellae, create sugars through photosynthesis, and are also the source of the corals’ impressive colors. However, when sea temperatures rise due to global warming, the algae produce oxygen at a dangerously high level, leaving the corals with no choice but to eject them. This turns the corals white, and requires them to either acquire new algae - which would only be possible for them if the water temperature returns to normal - or die within mere months.

Reef counseling

“We’re very far from an obituary,” said Russell Brainard, chief of the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program at NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, in an interview with The Huffington Post.

While Brainard did recognize that the obituary, which was closer to a tongue-in-cheek article about the Great Barrier Reef’s dire state than an authoritative proclamation of its death, employed the format to emphasize the severity of the situation, it could mislead many readers into thinking that the reef truly has perished.

According to Brainard, the scientific community has expressed concern over such exaggerated and inaccurate statements. “This sort of over-to-top story makes the situation much worse by conveying loss of hope rather than a need for global society to take actions to reverse these discouraging downward trends,” Brainard commented on Outside Magazine’s Facebook post.

In the same article, Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, expressed that he was “not impressed by the [article’s] message” of gloom and doom for the Great Barrier Reef. Hughes also took note of some of the factual inconsistencies in the article, such as its erroneous claim that the first mass-bleaching event took place in 1981 (it actually happened in 1998) and its usage of “the winter of 1997-1998” as a point of reference (in the southern hemisphere, that would have been summer).

As a matter of fact, no scientist or organization has declared the Great Barrier Reef to be “officially dead.” Furthermore, even just a cursory glance of the obituary would reveal that it actually does not link to any verifiable source or official proclamation, nor does it offer any supporting evidence to back up the article’s clickbait heading.

“This is a fatalistic, doomsday approach to climate change that isn’t going to engage anyone and misinforms the public,” said Kim Cobb, a coral reef expert at Georgia Tech, in an article on The Guardian.

The coral of the story

Based on data from a survey conducted early this year by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/media-room/coral-bleaching), the 2016 bleaching event managed to wipe out 22% of the corals in the Great Barrier Reef. While this certainly is a cause for alarm, it also reveals that over half of the reef system - and therefore, hope - is still alive.

"It is critically important now to bolster the resilience of the reef, and to maximize its natural capacity to recover," affirmed Professor John Pandolfi from the ARC Centre at the University of Queensland. A report from the ARC Centre reveals that 93% of the reef is affected by bleaching, which puts it at serious risk of extinction. "The reef is no longer as resilient as it once was, and it's struggling to cope with three bleaching events in just 18 years,” he added.

Additionally, the Australian and Queensland governments recently released the first Reef 2050 Plan annual report. The report revealed that the $2 billion investment, which started in March 2015, has accomplished 29 of its 151 planned actions. However, the report also brings to light the need to speed things up in order to ensure the plan’s success.

According to Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral reef expert at Brisbane’s University of Queensland, there is still “a long way to go” with regard to turning the tide against the Great Barrier Reef’s destruction, and that the key to saving it is to tackle climate change head-on, improve water quality, and limit the overexploitation of reefs.

Reef between the lines

“There is a lot we can do to minimize climate change and we need to get going on that,” stressed Cobb. “To say reefs are finished and we can’t do anything about it isn’t the message we need going forward.”

While the Great Barrier Reef definitely deserves immediate concern and attention, taking claims of its death at face value and spreading such articles without even bothering to check their veracity not only misinforms and disheartens the public, but also does a tremendous disservice to all the scientists, independent organizations, and government institutions who are working together to enable it to bounce back and continue to thrive for generations to come.

“No one knows if a serious effort could have saved the reef, but it is clear that no such effort was made,” wrote Jacobsen in the obituary. On the contrary, individuals and concerned groups have been working tirelessly towards that objective — and one does not even have to be a scientist or legislator to do their part. Aside from donating to marine conservation organizations and supporting their initiatives, helping out can be as simple as recycling whenever possible, cutting back on home and office energy consumption, reducing the use and consumption of plastic products, or walking instead of driving to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Instead of thinking that nothing can be done, it’s time to start thinking that we can do so much more. — TJD, GMA News