I don’t think he has ever been there – not once. But he has an opinion about the Great Barrier Reef. Last time I looked more than 111K of his followers (after just a few hours of it being being posted) were regurgitating the nonsense message that, of course, the Great Barrier Reef is stuffed, and, of course, Peter Ridd is a stooge of the sugar cane farmers — and also big tobacco. There are hundreds of congratulatory comments, following this short YouTube, confirming, what I already knew, that most of us here in Australia have become useful idiots. In political jargon, a useful idiot is a term used to reference a person perceived as propagandising for a cause—particularly a bad cause.
Too many Australians, whether young or old, voting Labor, Greens, Liberal or Teal, are mostly abrogating their capacity for reason in favour of being fashionable. It doesn’t have to be this way. It could be different, especially if the Jordan Shanks amongst us took a little bit of time to check their facts first. Nobody much does that anymore.
I sent Jordan Shanks the following short note by email yesterday.
friendlyjordies@protonmail.com
Dear Friendly Jordie,
I’ve just watched your episode about the Riddler and the Reef. I was hoping to see you in the water with some corals.
[I should have written with some sharks.]
What about you come see, with me? We could visit the epicentre of the most recent mass coral bleaching, John Brewer Reef. We could go snorkelling together, over the reef crest. You could see for yourself, the state it is in.
It was reported by Graham Readfearn in The Guardian as the worst of the worst bleached, and then there were the official aerial surveys that also reported on the bleaching. Last year, there was even the United Nation’s UNESCO people who visited – but not John Brewer Reef. They said it was all dead and dying.
But guess what: the assessment team never actually visited any of the reefs that were reported as bleached/dead and dying. The experts relied for their stories about the bleaching from the flybys that score the state of the corals out an aeroplane window from an altitude of 150 metres.
I’ve tried that. You can’t see much. To know the state of the corals you need to get in and under-the-water. Come see, with me.
I’ve been out to John Brewer a few times and under-the-water, and even made a short under-water documentary film showing the corals up close.
You can watch the film here, https://vimeo.com/775205373
But, of course, it is never the same as seeing with your own eyes.
Friendly Jordie, if you come see with me, I can also show you the remains of the corals that have been wilfully destroyed – by the fishes. The hungry fishes that eat all the best corals.
You probably didn’t know that one Humphead parrot fish will eat about six tonnes of coral in a year. Out at John Brewer reef they prefer the corals that have been newly replanted with all the government monies. So, those fishes, they are costing the Australian taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars each year, eating the corals that you and I have paid to have replanted. There is another and bigger story in all of that, for sure.
You mentioned the old corals, the 500-year-old corals, in your Riddler Ridd episode.
It was during the lockdowns in November 2020 that my dear friend, the late Rob McCulloch – phoned me, crying into his beer. He was devastated as he had a charter to pay that he had secured for Marlin fishermen and for ET (Andrew Ettiingshause) who has that TV show. But ET couldn’t get across the border into Queensland because of the lockdowns.
I suggested instead, that Rob take me out for a week looking for Porites – those 500 year old corals that are reported to all be dead because the reef is stuffed. You know the story, the popular narrative.
To be clear, the Porites are the massive, ancient bolder corals, some as big as minibuses, that have growth rings like tree rings faithfully recording the climate history of the oceans.
Well they used to. As the story goes.
I wanted to go all the way out to Myrmidon Reef, because that is where the scientists used to go on really big ships to core the really, really old Porites.
We went for a week. Dennis, Wizzy, Shaun, Stuart, me and the Skipper – Rob. [You can see us here, on the back of the Marlin fishing boat, Kiama.]
I am grateful for that experience. The adventure was funded by the B.Macfie Family Foundation through the Institute of Public Affairs after I put a phone call through to John Roskam. He took a risk, and believed in me when I said this was the opportunity of a lifetime.
I made a film about that adventure, and it even includes Riddles Ridd — as you call him.
You can watch ‘Finding Porites’ here: https://vimeo.com/766755037
We found a whole garden of Porites, under-the-water. It was the white-tipped reef shark that showed us the way. In the end.
You should come visit us here in Queensland, at the Great Barrier Reef and see some corals and the coral munching fishes and I’ve been trying for some years now to get the experts at the Australian Institute of Marine Science to sit down in front of a camera and answer some questions about the flybys and the bleaching. I have been wanting to ask them how they reconcile the extraordinary beauty and resilience of John Brewer Reef with their nonsense maps — devoid of evidence or even photographs. How they reconcile their claims of mass coral bleaching with all the colourful fishes and corals that I can see under-the-water.
Maybe, if you, Jordan Shanks, come, they will come, we can all go. Together. Even with Riddles Ridd. To John Brewer Reef, the epicentre of the most recent much acclaimed sixth mass coral bleaching.
We could maybe flyby and then, the next day, go under-the-water, or at least snorkel over the reef crest.
Cheers, Friendly Jennie
***
The feature image is by Toby, and shows a school of Humphead parrot fish. These are coraliferous fish; with each Humphead eating about 6 tonnes of coral each year — a school of them (typically they hang around in groups of 30) eat about as much coral as all the coral that is replanted at great expense each year to Australian taxpayers.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Hi Jen.
Good luck with getting the supercilious Jordie to look for himself . He’s got famous by attacking, quite rightly, the former NSW Govt and upsetting the like of Barilaro, who deserves a lot of investigation.
His content was popular, because they were on the nose.
He is not much of an investigator, so getting wet won’t be in his plans. He would have to totally change his whole ideology.
The fact that he is sneering at Peter Ridd, without any facts of his own, sums him up.
Keep trying though and good luck.
It is a conundrum that people would rather believe negative news than positive. Maybe we have been conditioned by so much negative media so it is only with subject knowledge and reasoned argument that people can believe in facts and overcome media negativity.
You the reef ‘Mermaid’ together with the reef ‘Riddler’ have established a fantastic platform of facts and reason around the natural events of the coastal interface extending to the reef. Well done and keep up the fight.
Jennifer, your letter to this Jordie fellow needs to be a public one other than on your website. There are too many useful idiots out there but your facts trump their idiocy.
This chap appeals to the usual mob with little in the way of experience.
Not funny , just typical of the modern comedian with the usual leftwing nonsense.
What a rude idiot “friendlyjordie” really is. I don’t imagine he will accept your invitation as he obviously is not interested in scientific facts. You and Peter are a quality team. Keep up your excellent work in challenging the negative Nellie’s.
Thanks Jen. When smart, observant people like you and Peter Ridd are aware of the realities of the Reef through personal involvement, it is always amazing how the naysaying doomsters will never make their own observations to provide evidence for more logical statements, but use only dubious “science” to back a political agenda.
It’s the same with sea level rise. It only takes a few carefully measured observations to show there is nothing unusual happening.
But ignorance and stupidity is their selected option.
Who is Jordan Shanks?
What is his part on our media landscape?
Considering his home invasion antics and ignorant videos over the years. I would think there is a long list of people who would like to take Jordan Shanks out to sea and show him the bottom of the ocean. Good luck Jennifer.
The climate and coral bleaching propagandists are getting desperate because their fairy-tales are being disproved time and time again by proper scientists who have the environment as their principle concern. It is time to tell the political left-wing establishment that they are out and out crooks whose only concern is promotion of a political narrative designed to enrich their cronies with corrupt practices and that they are not prepared to make underwater visits to the corals because the truth never lies.
Andrew,
He is has a very large (circa 1 million) YouTube following of mostly young people, many I assume are in Australia and most, I assume, are in NSW.
He is concerned about environmental issues, as would any young person with any respect for the institutions. Because, basically old white men and everyone else in positions of authority (be it in CSIRO, BOM, Labor, Liberals) all say that we have major problems, including risking a climate catastrophe.
But they/we don’t appear to be doing enough about it.
So, Jordon, bless his heart, has taken it upon himself to attempt some accountability.
For his efforts he has been firebombed.
In this video he correctly suggests that Australia (especially NSW) is the Cocaine capital of the world, and a very corrupt place,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF1-1CNggQA&t=1564s
The guy is fearless, smart, and energetic. He just doesn’t know the extent of this own ignorance. He doesn’t realise he is mostly working for the wrong side, against the truth.
If he took up mine, and Peter Ridd has also extended an invitation to him directly, to visit the Great Barrier Reef, well, he could begin to understand that the corruption extends into everything you thought you knew about environmentalism and climate change.
I hope this helps.
Thanks to WattsUpWithThat for cross posting: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/24/invitation-to-visit-mass-coral-bleaching-and-see-the-fishes/
G’day Jennifer,
Nice shot of the humpie parrots and a reminder for many that there are many corallivores living and predating coral on the GBR.
The usual suspects obsess over COTs and have done for decades but ignore or are unaware of;
“Some 150 Reef fishes (parrotfishes, butterfly fishes, pufferfishes), echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins), molluscs (snails) but also crustaceans (crabs) and annelids (worms) – corallivores represent a horde of organisms, of more than 150 species, known to feed on tissue, mucus or even coral skeleton. These organisms display diversified predation strategies (some species suck the mucus or polyps, others graze the coral until its skeleton) and are called “obligatory” (80% coral) or “facultative” according to their diets. Among the most popular corals preyed on are the genera: Acropora, Montipora, Pocillopora and Porites.”
https://www.coralguardian.org/en/corallivory-in-coral-reefs/
Cheers,
Dave.
Thanks for the information Jennifer.
It is mindless Rederick that come out of the mouths of these idiots.
they will never come and see and speak the truth.
it doesn’t support the climate emergency narrative, so it won’t be seen or heard.
how sad is society now..and there is no money in it (our money, collected by the govt and spent without responsibility or accountability.
People now, follow like sheep, talk like a parrot and walk off the proverbial cliff following the piper.
thanks again Jennifer,
I’m on the Barrier Reef now. Haven’t seen any bleaching. Heading off soon to Fitzroy Island .. doubt l’ll see any bleaching there either … weren’t we told that the farmers (sugar cane) and coal miners were wrecking the joint? Fitzroy is 3 km from the coast .. the coral, fish and turtles are extraordinary!
These desperados will give up on GBR and their Covid Bioweapons soon. Interesting to see the huge build up of an armada of naval vessels between Bowan and the Gulf of Carpentaria. Exercises they suggest … not this time!