APPARENTLY the Nature article I quote from in my new first film Beige Reef doesn’t claim there is no longer any Acropora at Stone Island. According to Graham Readfearn, writing today in The Guardian, I got it wrong.
In fact, he’s got it wrong.
Following are more direct quotes from the same Nature paper:
“Using a combination of anecdotal, ecological and geochemical techniques, the results of this study provide a robust understanding of coral community change for Bramston Reef and Stone Island.”
“At Stone Island, the reef crest was similar to that observed in 1994 with a substrate almost completely devoid of living corals.”
“For Stone Island, the limited evidence of coral growth since the early 19th Century suggests that recovery is severely lagging.”
“… by 1994 the reef was covered in a mixture of coral rubble and algae with no living Acropora and very few massive coral colonies present …”
The Nature article got it so wrong because the two transects were run across a section of reef where the corals are now dead, as I’ve explained in previous blog posts. The transect was run across the dead coral in front of our little boat as shown in the feature picture at the top of this blog post. At this reef, the live coral is at the reef’s edge, shown behind our boat in the picture. That edge of live coral runs for about two kilometres at varying widths around the south-western edge of Stone Island.
Following is the email I wrote to the journalist, Graham Readfearn yesterday with my four responses to his four questions.
Hi Graham,
Thank you for your email concerning my first film, Beige Reef. I reply to your four questions as inserts to your email, following.
By way of perspective, let me also comment that:
Beige Reef is a short film showing the condition and extent of an inshore coral reef that is part of the Great Barrier Reef.
We filmed this reef because, according to a scientific report in the journal Nature, there are no longer any Acropora corals at this location. The peer-reviewed article, coauthored by David Wachenfeld who is the chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, claims the corals at Stone Island have been destroyed by global warming and declining water quality.
Yet we found about 25 hectares of Acropora in the north-facing bay at Stone Island.
The underwater cinematography shown in this film is irreconcilable with the claims in the Nature article.
Beige Reef, my very first film, makes the point that Peter Ridd has been making for some time: that our scientific institutions are untrustworthy, that there is a need for some quality assurance of the science.
As a journalist I ask the you dispassionately consider the evidence, which should begin with you watching the film and then reading the article in Nature.
Kind regards
Jennifer Marohasy
1. In your video, you say that Dr Clark’s paper says there are “no living acropora colonies” at Stone Island. But Dr Clark says her paper did not say that, and in fact said there were some acroporas at the site of Saville-Kent’s original photographs. Clark says you have incorrectly placed emphasis on a 1994 finding from Wachenfeld, which is quoted in her paper. Your IPA colleague Gideon Rozner also repeats this claim in a promotional video.
RESPONSE FROM JENNIFER MAROHASY:
Clark et al. explain (page 11) that they took just two transects each of 20 metres at Stone Island. Based on this sampling they intended to categorized coral cover as ‘live hard coral’, ‘dead coral’, ‘soft coral’, ‘algae’, ‘other substratum’ (substrate and sediment), and ‘unknown’.
It is specifically stated that at Stone Island only nine dead corals were found along transects 1 and 2, and that these corals were covered in mud and algae.
2. Clark says that for Stone Island, her paper concentrated on the sites visited by Saville-Kent and Wachenfeld, which is a different location to much of your footage from a subtidal reef slope.
RESPONSE FROM JENNIFER MAROHASY:
Clark et al. explain (page 11) that only two short transects were taken because the reef environment was ‘highly consistent’. Based on these two transects Clark et al. draw conclusions about the situation at Stone Island in general. My first film is about Beige Reef that is just around the headland from the location of the two transects.
My second film will be about the reef to the south south-west of Stone Island. Here there is an extensive area of coral (including Acropora spp.) just metres from the two transects from which Clark et al draw erroneous conclusions.
3. Clark says that her 2016 paper did not make any claims about other areas of the reef and no “ill-fated prognosis” was made in that paper.
RESPONSE FROM JENNIFER MAROHASY:
Following is just some of what Clark et al write about the corals at Stone Island:
“Using a combination of anecdotal, ecological and geochemical techniques, the results of this study provide a robust understanding of coral community change for Bramston Reef and Stone Island.”
“At Stone Island, the reef crest was similar to that observed in 1994 with a substrate almost completely devoid of living corals.”
“For Stone Island, the limited evidence of coral growth since the early 19th Century suggests that recovery is severely lagging.”
“… by 1994 the reef was covered in a mixture of coral rubble and algae with no living Acropora and very few massive coral colonies present …”
4. In the video you say you could not see any bleaching – yet Dr Clark says this is not surprising, because regardless, you visited in August 2019 – more than two years after the previous major bleaching episode.
RESPONSE FROM JENNIFER MAROHASY:
I am delighted that Tara Clark acknowledges that there is no bleaching of corals at Stone Island. I would like to film coral bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef, but no-one has been able to tell me where I can find bleached corals. I would be happy to travel to any location at the Great Barrier Reef that shows significant bleaching for a future IPA short film. Could you, and/or Tara Clark could provide me with specific locations.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
As the saying goes, “there are none so blind as those who will not see”; under any circumstances that would refute their misplaced scientific consensus, least of all to establish the truth of the matter.
I do hope that your scientist colleague replies, but I trust that you’re not holding your breath in anticipation of an early reply as ‘we, the people’ need you Jennifer, to keep showing and telling us the truth.
Well done, but where The Guardian is concerned I wouldn’t expect a sensible response.
The best advice my late dad ever gave me was; “Never argue with an idiot”. That description seems to fit most journalists paid by The Guardian. They’ll never admit that they, their bandwagon or their paymasters are wrong.
It sounds like the Clark et al paper in Nature contains significant errors and oversights such that it gives an incorrect impression of the corals at Stone Is and Bramston Reef, and of other data.
In this situation the Clark et al paper should be withdrawn, or at the bare minimum, corrected.
Go get’em Jen. We are with you and for you.
The Guardian are a bunch of socialist/communist/globalist/Marxist/nincompoops.
Take George Monbiot, what a louse.
Showing up someone like Clark, who claims to be a scientist , as completely wrong, is a necessary and normal part of the scientific process.
Congratulation Jen for doing this so comprehensively in your short film and followup here.
The Guardian will always be a propaganda tool for misinformation. It has no scientific credibility.
Dr. Clark was not wrong, but chose to intentionally mislead the public, & the scientific community with this paper. The two transects chosen are obviously deliberately chosen to be on the top of the drying reef flat. Anyone with any even brief experience will know that there is virtually no living coral on the drying flat, regularly exposed to air at low tide.
If Dr Clark does not know this, they have NO knowledge of coral. If as i believe, they do know this, then the whole paper is a confidence trick, [sounds like the James Cook crowd], with the chosen transects designed to tell a lie, intentionally promoting the dying reef fallacy, & the global warming scam.
To say that the whole paper was designed to be a con job, full of misinformation, carefully put together to tell a lie is not going too far.
Thanks for all your efforts to show these so called scientists for what they really are Jenifer. Keep up the great work.
Super effort Jennifer, keep up the stellar work!
Searching for the truth in Coral Sea.
Short Doco watch: https://youtu.be/MtBYJWAE6XI
The propagandists at JCU have relied purposefully for decades now on the inability of independent citizens or experts to check & report on the bumpf coming out of this so-called “centre of learning”
Jennifer and team, I hope you run hard with these investigations and publish, publish, publish for the world to see, hear and read.
It’s hard to get the “believers” to even watch this video oR read any conflicting facts about the GBR.
I appreciate that this is not your topic of investigation BUT is there any way we can investigate the absolutely enormous grant of $444 million given to the GBR Foundation by Malcolm Turnbull without tender.
Keep up the good work and we will keep sharing
Hi Jen,
Good to see you just sticking to the facts and pointing out discrepancies – as I noted to you before, calling them all thieves and liars will just get their back up and push them to call you a denier. Although they probably will call you that anyway, you can just ignore it and ask them how they missed what you have seen, invite them to go there with you so you can show them in person, and so on – journos AND scientists alike can/should get this invite to see for themselves that this place is fine.
Take the line “I’m just trying to pin down exactly how bad climate change has made the GBR – shouldn’t we be spending little what we have to make the most difference? Don’t we need to know as much as possible to ensure we have maximum impact in our repair efforts? Why are you choosing to ignore information about the health of the GBR? Don’t you care about it? Isn’t additional data from other scientists worth anything to you? I thought I was saving you and the taxpayer money by providing you with this data free of charge.” Optionally add (to journos): “They must be in someone’s pocket to ignore such obvious evidence – I can’t see why else they would refuse to retract when I have presented evidence that things are not as the paper presents.”