Jennifer Marohasy
I was nervous about taking Sky News Australia presenter and the Editor of The Spectator Australia, Rowan Dean, to John Brewer Reef. Would we really be able to find the famous coral – the badly bleached coral that had featured in The Guardian as emblematic of mass death from global warming.
I wondered and I worried. Eighteen months on. If that coral hadn’t died from global warming, might it have been eaten by a Bump Head – a type of coralliferous parrot fish in the family Scaridae.
I don’t worry about all the corals. But sometimes I worry about specific corals.
There are a lot of corals to potentially worry about.
Australian governments – especially recent Coalition governments – keep giving so much money to activist scientists who claim they can save the Great Barrier Reef?
It is still one of the seven wonders of the world. It is still visible from outer space. Visible from outer space because this coral-dominated ecosystem is so vast because there is so much coral.
Yet, our government gives hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of hard-earned taxpayer dollars for plantings of just a few corals here and there. Not even an acre of corals, sometimes it is just a few metres of corals.
I have visited a couple of these plantings.
Everyone is usually disappointed.
The few sprigs of corals that they plant usually grow. But then these same few small sprigs are sometimes gobbled up – by the large fishes.
Did you know that a single Bump Head consumes upward of 5 tonnes of live coral in one year.
These coralliferous fish hang around in groups of about 30. That’s 150 tonnes of live coral gobbled in a year!
These fishes have bellies full of coral – including taxpayer funded plantings.
I’ve jumped off the back of a boat, at a place called Bougainville Reef, and descended down 12 metres to see these Bump Heads; like a herd of buffalo across an open plain: kicking up the dust – except it is sand. And eating the grass – except it is coral.
I sometimes worry that these fishes will descent on John Brewer Reef and eat-up that one famous coral that featured in The Guardian, that was back in March last year, in March 2022.
I remember Scott Hargreaves, now Executive Director at the Institute of Public Affairs, being apprehensive about approving for me to visit. Did I really wanted to take the best underwater photographer, Stuart Ireland, to a coral reef that was making headlines around the world as the epicentre of a sixth mass coral bleaching?
I was back at that reef just two months or so ago, with Rowan Dean. I did want to show him that specific coral, as well as all the fishes at this reef that had made media headlines for all the wrong reasons.
A full 18 months after the first claims this reef would take a decade to recover from mass bleaching, we set off to find that coral.
Skipper Paul Crocombe got us to John Brewer Reef. You will see in the film launched at YouTube just today whether Rowan is brave enough to jump in, on snorkel, and find that coral. The film is called ‘Café Latte Coral’ and I’m hoping you will share it with your friends.
Is Rowan Dean going to find that coral dead, or recovered – or eaten by a Bump Head!
‘Café Latte Coral – it’s supposed to be dead!’ is an IPA production, starring Rowan Dean, produced by me (Jennifer Marohasy), filmed and edited by the best underwater cameraman who also happens to be a marine biologist, the one and only Stuart Ireland. A big thanks to Paul Crocombe who heads Adrenalin Snorkel and Dive for getting us out to John Brewer Reef.
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The feature image shows Rowan with Paul Crocombe being filmed by Stuart Ireland with Leonard Lim assisting. We set off from the Breakwater Marina, Townsville, with Adrenalin Snorkel and Dive. If you would like to see The Great Barrier Reef, and in particular visit a reef that has been described as mass death, then book a trip with Adrenalin Snorkel and Dive to John Brewer Reef.
If you only have two minutes, you can watch a short version of Café Latte Coral, click here.
If you would like to see more Bump Heads, including at Bougainville Reef, they feature in one of my very first little productions, home-made with a slow and teasing voice over, click here.
I have seen estimates that coral “sand” is parrotfish droppings by and large.
Willis Eschenbach says so also.
Yup they grind up the coral ‘rock’ with their teeth, eat the soft bits, and excrete the ground up rock as sand. It’s been estimated that a single parrotfish can excrete 90kg of sand in a year.
It’s not an estimate. It’s a well known fact that coral atoll white sand beaches are the result of parrotfish excrement.
Me: “Hey Honey, want to take a trip to a tropical paradise and lounge on a beautiful beach of parrotfish poop?”
Wife: “I’ll pass.”
Thanks WUWT for saving me $8,000!
Rays also leave coral sand.
Why would a great Ph.D. scientist from Australia go through all the trouble of putting on a wetsuit and diving with a camera to photograph coral when it would be so much easier to jump to a scary conclusion and program a computer model so it “proves” your conclusion is right?
If you predict a climate or environmental catastrophe, you might even get peer reviewed and published.
I have observed what gets rewarded in modern “climate science”, so I plan to get published too.
I have developed a computer model that proves climate change will kill your dog within 12.49392 months, if not sooner.
My “study” has it all:
A catchy title:
“Examination of The Dog Tipping Point”
A prediction of doom coming soon, with a very scientific sounding five decimal places — none of that coming in 50 to100 years claptrap for me.
Verified by my computer model
Everyone loves dogs
No one has made such a scary prediction before
How can I not get a government grant?
Especially if I give “The Big Guy” 10%
This is a serious post, not satire
Riigghhtt.
Unfortunately some (oh, about 80 thousand in Dubai) will take you seriously. You need to publish your model result immediately at COP28. Your result is ‘logical’—because of their fur more dogs must die of heat than cold.
Of course, here in Fort Lauderdale we solve our Scottish Cairn terrier summer heat problem by frequent close grooming. Not an adaptation that would occur to COP28 all in on mitigation.
Don’t mention that – or the UN will force us to be shaved from head to toe, to shave us from climate change!
There are a small percentage of us perhaps born the with affliction of wanting to know for ourselves, wanting to get as close to the truth as possible. And then an even smaller percentage who feel an absolute need to communicate what we find/what we see. Not so many decades ago they gave women like me lobotomies.
You are right, Jennifer, I am constantly amazed at how many people are prepared to just shut up in order to prosper in an immoral environment like climate science.
Thanks for all the great articles and photographs on your website. i recommend every article for my daily climate and energy recommended reading lists
Unfortunately, I already knew you were smarter than me and better looking, but now it appears you also write better jokes. Now I need a lobotomy.
Keep up the good work as the best environmental scientist in Australia,
G’Day Jennifer
Back in 1970 the theater on Green Island was showing films of the reef made by a local chap. From memory his name was Monkman. I wonder if any of those films have survived?
G’Day Richard,
“Verified by my computer model.”
Don’t let on that you wrote the program in GW Basic on an Atari 600XL.
So, I did some quick research before commenting. Bumphead parrot fish (aka green humphead parrotfish) are the largest of the roughly 96 species of parrotfish. They can grow to 4 feet and 100#. They like to school in groups of 20-30, as Jen’s images show.
Like all parrotfish, their diet includes coral smothering algae, a net reef benefit. Unlike smaller parrotfish, big bumpheads can also crunch and consume living coral with its polyps, perhaps up to about 50% of the bumphead diet (different researchers have come to different conclusions—59% seems an upper limit based on quick googlefu research). So a major contributor to coral sand in the Pacific.
Because they are big and tasty, in many places bumpheads are also being overfished. Bad for coral (algae) and coral derived sand (which corals use to establish new colonies after spawning).
Sufficient bumpheads can definitely 👍 extirpate a small new coral colony, but usually have a net positive impact on a large established colony like at Brewer’s Reef. Since bumpheads like to sleep in coral ‘caves’, their prevalence amongst new small coral colonies is small. So net net, Bumpheads are beneficial. IMO, Jen knew that in advance of her wonderful post and videos.
Learning new stuff at WUWT is fun.
Yes it is net benficial for coral as a whole species, but not necessarily when you are looking for one very specific coral growth out of a whole reef, as Dr. Marohasy pointed out at least twice.
… especially when guiding media types who will automatically ignore the “coral piranha” munching nearby and blame “climate change” for any coral issue.
Er, hate to disagree Rud, but parrot fish are great eating only if cooked fresh from the briny.
Their flesh goes soft and soggy if frozen, and only marginally better if refrigerated for a day or so.
They keep ok in a slurry of iced salt water on the way back to shore from a day’s fishing trip, but after that, they’re a “mother-in-law” fish.
Sweetlip are the best eating reef fish by a mile i.m.o.
Crumbed Coral Trout at Burleigh Mars
Good work Jennifer.
It would seem that deceit and cowardice are the main explanation for why most of the world have been given a completely wrong impression about the state of the reef. Thankfully there are real scientists and journalists willing to tell the true story.
Parrot fish poop is a bunch of shit. But probably more exact than any other guess 🙂
Thank you for posting this article and attached video. My wife and I actually snorkeled many locations on the Great Barrier Reef from Townsville down to Cairns in 2017. We saw amazing coral and fish colonies throughout the reef with some localized areas of bleaching. Surveys cannot be done effectively by air for the reasons stated in the video. Like most CAGW propaganda, data is cherry picked for effect in the MSM. Reefs are living changing organisms with the ability to adapt to many extreme climates as they have for Eons.