‘Environment is our economy': Tourism wakes up to a reef in peril

Take a journey out to the Great Barrier Reef these days and it's highly likely your tour will include stunningly iridescent corals and a wondrous assortment of fish, turtles and even the odd shark that you came to see.

The location of the Blue Planet II documentary is barely
recognisable after the 2016 mass bleaching event.

But such a trip would offer only part of the picture.

Travel even a couple of kilometres away, as this correspondent did recently, and it's just as likely the visitor will see a reef in ruins: plate corals matted in thick algae, brittle staghorn corals littering the seabed, and only the grazing fish - though still luminescent parrot fish and other species - nibbling at the greenery.

The latter site, on the Opal Reef off Port Douglas, would be distressing for viewers of David Attenborough's Blue Planet II - a location chosen by the BBC as among the best of the best.

Read the story by Peter Hannam from The Age - “‘Environment is our economy': Tourism wakes up to a reef in peril.”