Season’s Greetings, from Jude and Grandma at the Great Barrier Reef

I have a grandson; not quite six weeks old.  I have been telling him – one of his names is Jude – I have been telling Jude true stories about the Great Barrier Reef. I have told him that the corals across the bay from where we live in Yeppoon, that these corals in Keppel Bay bleached stark white earlier in the year.

It was on 19th April, exactly seven months before Jude was born that I rolled backwards – scuba tank on my back – backwards off the Keppel Dive boat at Bald Rock reef into the Great Barrier Reef.  I was hoping that as with previous claims of mass bleaching, this was exaggerated.

The New York Times had featured corals from this reef in a single photograph as badly bleached.  The claim was that all the corals were badly bleached, not just at the Keppel Islands but across the Great Barrier Reef.

In the shallow waters of Keppel Bay, coral bleaching on a mass scale has been infrequent and reef recovery has usually been fast.  There was mass bleaching in Keppel Bay in 1998, 2002, 2006, 2020, with minor bleaching in between.  There are also earlier unofficial reports by local fishermen of bleaching in 1983 and 1987.

The locals will tell you that Keppel Bay’s reefs can recover rapidly from bleaching because of the fast growing dominant branching Acropora species.  After the catastrophic 2002 mass bleaching, coral cover increased rapidly, reaching 81 percent in 2004, the highest coral cover ever documented.  I am quoting a local biologist. In fact data only goes back a few years before then.

Of course, bleaching has occurred over the millennia. It is just that scuba, and more specifically underwater photography, is a recent technology and then there is the politicisation of corals.  The Great Barrier Reef is used by some to claim that we are irreversibly destroying the Earth.  By “we”, I have already explained to Jude, my grandson who is not quite six weeks old, that he would be included but not until he gets a bit older.

Then there are others who claim record high coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef as though we – to include Jude when he is older – are having no impact on the Earth.

“What is the truth”, I have already asked Jude, and does it matter?

When I ask him such questions, and also questions about the cucumbers at the bottom of the sea, he looks back at me as though I already know the answer.  I do explain that sea cucumbers are not to be confused with the cucumbers in our garden, that his Granddad has been growing for us.

His Mum and Dad, have already taken him across the bay, to Great Keppel Island, to have a look.

Jude has already been underwater at Secret Cove, with his Dad.

On 19^th April, exactly seven months before he was born, I dove not only Bald Rock reef but also at Secret Cove.   The corals at Secret Cove were also all stark white back then.   Now the branching Acropora species are mostly all dead.  But there are still lots of fish and sting rays, and sponges, epaulette sharks and sea cucumbers.

This past winter, when water temperatures dropped as usual by a full nine degrees Celsius, there were also humpback whales at Secret Cove and also at Bald Rock reef.   Now these whales are underwater at the Antarctic and so many of the Acropora corals in Keppel Bay are dead from the coral bleaching last summer.

Jude’s Dad after taking Jude into the water at Secret Cove on 14th December, went and caught us a fish – a sweetlip that is a fish in the genus Plectorhinchus.   The fish his Dad caught was in the same genus as the fish in the feature photograph, at the top of this Christmas note.  His Dad steamed the fish, and then served it with ginger for dinner.

His Dad has been taking Jude into the sea every afternoon for the last two weeks – into Keppel Bay.  Jude emerges with an extraordinary calmness about him.  How I feel, when I am under the sea.

Best wishes to you for the New Year, may you find peace in nature if not in life.

 Season’s Greetings!