We've heard a lot about warming oceans in the past couple of decades, and it's always sounded so distant and technical. Even to me a 2-degree jump in sea temperature sounded harmless. But that was before I saw what it meant. That's when it got personal, when it literally hit me where I live.
During the summer of 2010-11, Western Australia had an unprecedented marine heatwave. One morning not far from where I live, beach-walkers saw seabirds massed along the shoreline. Birds as far as the eye could see. When they got closer they saw the tide-line covered with dead and dying abalone – thousands of them. The sea had suddenly gotten too hot for these molluscs to endure. So they climbed out off the limestone reefs to escape, only to find themselves – out of the frying pan and into the fire – roasting to death on the sand. A mass stranding of abalone – no one had ever seen the like before.
Read what Tim Winton has to say in today’s Melbourne Age - “Despair is not an option when it comes to climate change.”
