A CORAL PREDICT-AMENT

You’ve heard about the devastations to the world’s reef ecosystems. Most notably, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s east coast saw terrible coral bleaching events that rightfully got much attention in recent years. But that problem was only part of a much larger picture and a longer trend of deterioration seen since systematic observations and measurements began in the mid ‘80s. In a break from that trend, between 2012 and 2016 the GBR system underwent a period of strong hard coral growth. But that growth didn't persist. What followed was the worst coral collapse ever recorded — a decimation of the Great Barrier Reef system that continued through to 2019.

At that time, scientists and laypersons alike predicted the total unravelling of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem. The Guardian even wrote an obituary for the reef. They explained that this ecological treasure took 600,000 years to form and how, in just 40 years, it has been denuded by combinations of cyclones, unprecedented temperatures due to climate change, chemical run-off from automobiles and agriculture, and a plague of toxic, coral-eating sea stars.

As all that was unfolding, Dr Peter Ridd, a long-time professor at James Cook University, began questioning the research coming out of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, especially the emerging collapse narrative. In 2016 he was quoted in the Cairns Post rejecting the findings of his colleagues. They were arguing that “the Great Barrier Reef will be in a terminal condition within five years” without $10 billion in government funding to address water quality and climate-related issues. Professor Ridd, who is commonly referred to as a climate skeptic in the press, called their assertions “laughable.” A year later, in an interview with Sky News, Ridd reiterated his concerns about bad research and offered that, although scientists “genuinely believe that there are problems with the reef ... I think they’re emotionally attached to their subject” and “you can no longer trust their stuff.”

Ridd followed all that criticism with an article published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, noting:

Studies of biomedical and other sciences indicate that a considerable fraction of published peer-reviewed scientific literature, perhaps half, has significant flaws. To demonstrate the potential failings of the present approaches to scientific Quality Control (QC), we describe examples of science associated with perceived threats to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia. There appears a serious risk of efforts to improve the health of the GBR being directed inefficiently and/or away from the more serious threats. We suggest the need for a new organisation to undertake quality reviews and audits of important scientific results that underpin government spending decisions on the environment.

His university felt these public statements amounted to professional misconduct and initiated censure against him. The university even went so far as to claim he, a leading geophysicist working on the reef for three decades, was out of his lane talking about impacts to the reef and the reef's potential for resilience. In 2018, after 27 years of employment with the university, as head of the Physics department and the Marine Geophysical Laboratory, and despite pioneering research techniques for studying marine sedimentology and having published widely on coastal oceanography and the effects of sediments on coral reefs, he was given the boot. He was fired on the grounds that he did not remain silent about what he felt was censorship and a violation of his basic academic freedom.

In the court case that followed, Ridd was awarded more than $1.2 million for wrongful dismissal, with the judge noting James Cook University had “not understood the whole concept of intellectual freedom.” However, the case was appealed by the university and the result overturned by a federal court in 2020. But it seems clear to me that what Ridd did was make a very public prediction, veering away from the consensus in his and other fields. He told the world there was reason to worry the science on the reef was not rigorous and that the conclusions of many marine scientists were likely incorrect. For that he lost his job.

So what has happened to the coral ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef since Ridd was fired? Well, from 2019 on, the reef has seen strong coral growth. In fact, coral cover in 2021 exceeded anything previously recorded. And that was repeated in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

In response, just this week in fact, Nature published research pointing out that the reef has seen the highest ocean temperatures in four centuries and emphasizing many of the unrelenting stresses on the reef, such as: mass coral bleaching, declining calcification rates, outbreaks of crown-of-thorns sea stars, severe tropical cyclones, and overfishing.

Still, the folks who conduct the annual reef survey, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, also just dropped their 2024 report. The report on reef condition shows significant coral cover increases across all 94 reefs surveyed. 32 sites showed no signs of bleaching at all and 38 had low bleaching. Along with that, 82 of 94 reef surveys found no crown-of-thorns sea stars present, though one reef had an established outbreak and one other was experiencing a severe outbreak.

Cape York hard coral cover

And you will not be shocked to learn that, aside from hard coral cover and sea stars, the folks at AIMS also make observations of reef fish and other organisms. That said, they have no aggregated summary of those and they also make it as difficult as possible to access the information. They provide individual graphs showing the annual counts for groups of organisms categorized under six different regions of the reef system. And under each region exists graphs that amount to a historical accounting of their counts of hard corals, juvenile hard corals, soft corals, algae, and microalgae, with each of those having a graph for both inshore and offshore populations. There are also graphs for annual counts of reef fish, including: harvested species, herbivores, damselfishes, coral trout, and large fishes. But each one of these graphs for each region, location, and organism category is found on its own page, meaning there are something like 100 separate graphs to find, open up separately, and download for yourself if you want to get a picture of what's happening on the reef.

Fish abundance at the Cape York site:

Regardless, it looks to me like where we have data most locations have seen increased numbers of organisms and species diversity in recent years, but with counts continually going up and down over the decades. In some cases, as with harvested species and large fishes in Cape York, Fizroy, and Mackay Whitsunday regions, the trend in abundance is at record highs or better, with numbers in the last few years often far exceeding all previous counts. But does that boom presage some kind of population collapse? Maybe. Or it could result in a restabalization. Seems safe to say we don't know. What we can be sure about is that the reef and the countless species who depend upon it are still there. It also seems safe to say we need more and better research if we're ever going to make accurate predictions and know how best to ensure the resilience of this and other reefs.