Environmental groups have claimed that the Great Barrier Reef is decaying

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Environmental groups have claimed that the Great Barrier Reef is decaying and it has pushed the north Queensland tourism industry to the point of “near recession”. As a result of this, visitor numbers slumping amid negative perceptions of the natural wonder.

Operators are showing large drops in reef cruise bookings by local and international tourists, as Cathay Pacific lately ­declared that from October it would stop its direct flights from Hong Kong to Cairns — after a quarter of a century servicing the route — because of a lack of demand.

Cairns-based Coral Expeditions, which manages luxury cruise boats, explains passenger numbers to the reef declined 15 per cent in the 12 months to June, after flat numbers the previous year. “There’s definitely a Queensland-wide downturn in reef tourism and it’s definitely affected by the perception of the reef health,” said Coral Expeditions commercial ­director Jeff Gillies.

“People are not going to the Great Barrier Reef.”

Previous Cairns mayor Kevin Byrne said the region’s tourism ­industry was in terrible shape. “We now have a monumental task to get people to come to the Great Barrier Reef,” he said. “As a living organism it is in wonderful shape and people need to be proud enough to stand up and say it.”

“Our tourism industry here is pretty well static, if not in ­recession.”

Many environmental groups have claimed that the reef has lost about 50 per cent of its coral in the last 30 years, has increas¬ingly become world’s major headlines in recent months. A UBS report shows Australia is ­especially losing support with the Chinese, slipping from the second most popular destination in April last year to the fourth most popular six months later.

The website of The Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef, a conservation group, states that climate change is the reef’s biggest threat, “causing rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification and extreme weather events”.

“The sequential mass coral bleaching we are witnessing on the Great Barrier Reef is the literal effect of climate change,” it says.

The chief executive of the group, Andy Ridley, concurs that there is a problem with the perception that the reef is dead. “The situation is not black and white,” he said. “Some parts of the reef are extraordinary; other parts are affected. It’s clearly a nuanced situation. The perception is the reef is dead, which it isn’t.

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