The Great Barrier Reef's death: Debunking myths and understanding the challenges

Some feel Outsider Online's obituary was a need as no one's listening, your take?

The current debate is nothing but sensationalisation of an issue. Such articles can have an adverse effect. If we declare the reef is dead, policy makers will be glad to have nothing to bother about and will open it up for cement mining. Rather than giving them such opportunity by relegating the GBR to the graveyard, we should use this event to build political consensus for strategic surgical interventions to help reefs.

Reports say bleaching has impacted 93% of the GBR. How could we have prevented it?

The 2016 coral bleaching was global phenomenon, which not only affected the Great Barrier Reef, but also Maldives, the Coral Triangle, Lakshadweep and the Gulf of Mannar. But there's nothing we could have done; it wasn't human induced. You see, bleaching is a natural phenomenon that will continue to happen. Such catastrophic events are required to drive evolutionary processes so that over-mature ecosystems whose productivity has reduced with time, give way to fresh ecosystems. In the next 15 – 20 years GBR may get restored into new hard coral or soft coral.

It becomes a major concern only in the human dimension because livelihood of millions depends on the ecosystem services provided by these reefs. Thus in the 'human' context, yes, the impact is major and global, but in 'ecosystem' and 'nature' contexts, there's nothing like impact—but merely a shift to a new ecosystem. It's our ignorance about ecosystems that leads to extreme activist views.

You say it wasn't human induced, but what about the impact of global warming?

Climate change has been happening over a period of time, only the pace has increased significantly over the last 100 years, due to industrialisation. But ocean warming (which causes bleaching) has occurred for aeons.

Yes, if bleaching results from acidification—that results from carbon emissions entering sea water—you can blame global warming. But, that would have a local or at the most regional impact. What we saw this year was due to El Nino warming. We are not capable of causing the whole world's ocean temperature to rise by 1 to 3 degree! Only the sun has that power. Pinning everything on global warming doesn't make sense.

Well, then what are scientists fighting for? Is there a way to revive the reefs?

We can't avoid bleaching events, but can certainly assist reef recovery. It would require some hard decisions and strong political will. What's alive of GBR is capable of reviving large tracts of reef in over a decade or so. We've seen such success with Lakshadweep, which was 80% dead to 50% alive post the 1998 bleaching. The strategy should be: stop tourism for at least five years of natural recovery, and adopt new technology. Dead reefs will lead to a population explosion of herbivorous fish that feed on the excessive growth of algae—the cleaning creates the perfect environment for coral larvae to settle and form new reefs. Hence, these fishes mustn't be harvested. Australian economy depends on GBR, so politicians may find banning impossible, but if not done, GBR will only deteriorate and leave nothing for tourists anyway.

What about Indian reefs, what's their current status?

Vulnerability of reefs varies from place to place and no single parameter defines it. But Indian reefs though smaller than GBR, suffer far more anthropogenic stress. Thus, needless to say, Indian reefs are hugely degraded, barring few (30 - 40) in isolated places like Suheli at Lakshadweep, and Barren Island, Narcondam Island, Craggy Island in the Andamans. But this year, Lakshadweep has suffered bleaching too.

Should the recovery approach for Lakshadweep be different?

For natural recovery, we too need a five-year ban on reef fishing. But must give fishermen alternatives - incentivise them for zero bycatch fishing, and pole and line tuna fishery (that doesn't affect reefs) with better prices. Having worked with them for 30 years, I can guarantee that people at Lakshadweep will support it; we must partner with them.

We also need to ban disposal of dredged sand in lagoons and abandon the proposed Sagar Mala tourism expansion plan at Suheli and Cheriyam among our remaining best five reefs; tourism will ring their death knell.

We just need to build political consensus, at this stage recovery for our reefs is possible.

Wouldn't Lakshadweep too benefit from bio rock technology?

Obviously! These reefs are basically aggregation of calcium carbonate by polyps (a kind of animal), which has an enzyme that binds the calcium in water and converts it into calcium carbonate. Bio-rock technology does this through release of low intensity current in water. Thailand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Indonesia, the world is adopting it, but India. Here, no one is bothered about reefs, forget recovery and we are so closed to new ways. The technology is patented, but our country has the best minds. If the government asks IIT students to take it up as a project, it would just take us a year to establish protocol and within next 10 years you'll see 200 – 300 hectares of restored reefs. It's very low cost technology when compared to the kind of results it produces.