The Great Barrier Reef of Australia is 2300km long and a ribbon of color, life, and beauty. But the threats facing the largest living organism on earth are as well-known as its beauty. Coral bleaching events occurred in 2016 and 2017. Massive coral loss was seen. Two years ago, Unesco considered adding the Great Barrier Reef to its list of World Heritage in danger.
Care for the reef starts at home. It’s as easy as picking the right location. Up to 85% of visitors view the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns and Whitsunday Islands. If you choose to visit another part of the Queensland coastline and islands, your visit will have less impact on the reef.
Dive boat live aboard from Townsville.
Adrenalin Snorkel & Dive operates the only live-aboard boat in Townsville. The two- and three-day dive and snorkel tours cover the less-explored areas of the central coral reef as well as the SS Yongala wreck, arguably Australia’s best wreck dive. Adrenalin offers day trips to Lodestone Reef’s coral gardens and canyons, located offshore of Townsville. Heron Island Resorts and Lady Elliot Island Resorts offer quiet coral patches as well as sustainable accommodation.
Use renewable energy at Lady Elliot Island.
Lady Elliot Island is located at the southern end of the reef and is known for its mantas and sea turtles. It also boasts a resort that has impeccable eco credentials. The Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort is committed to using 100% renewable energy, powered by over 400 solar panels and composting on-site, by the year 2020. The resort offers a Climate Change Trail – an hour-long walk that includes an interpretation of the impacts of global warming on a coral island.
Visit the Heron Island Research Centre
Heron Island has a resort and a University of Queensland a href= “https://www.lonelyplanet.com/australia/hotels/heron-island-resort/a/lod/d6077aa4-615c-4f4e-abcc-6dcba1292150/1294777”>research station/a>. Jacques Cousteau rated Heron Island as one of his ten favorite dive sites. Heron Island is home to a resort as well as a University of Queensland Research Station. Guests can take tours of both to learn more about the reef.
Lizard Island National Park: Sustainable waste management
The Lizard Islands Resort is located on an island that has been a National Park since 1937. The 1013-hectare peninsula is shared by a research station operated by the Australian Museum. The station offers guided tours to resort guests. Lizard Island is located right next to the Great Barrier Reef. Therefore, sustainable measures are vital. The resort stopped using plastic straws and bottles in September 2018. The resort recycles 60% of its waste and ships the rest to the mainland via barge.
Learn before you go.
Learn a bit about the reef before you go. In Cairns Reef, teach hosts information shows on the reef three evenings per week. The show is ostensibly designed to introduce visitors to the features and wildlife they will see during a trip. However, it also follows the philosophy of ‘with knowledge comes appreciation.’
The spectacular ReefHQ in Townsville is not only the largest living reef tank in the world, but it also serves as a national education center for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (as they run a turtle clinic), providing similar opportunities to get up close and personal with the reef.
Use tour operators who support research.
The GBRMPA will only issue permits to tour operators who have ecotourism certification. This means that all reef excursions should be environmentally friendly and sustainable. Some operators have gone a step beyond.
Ex-commercial anglers run eye-to-eye encounters and provide reef researchers with space on all of their multi-day trips. A portion of the trip cost goes towards funding research. Quicksilver is one of the largest tour operators on the reef. It has its own Reef Biosearch division, which claims to be Australia’s biggest employer of biologists outside government agencies.
Join conservation schemes
You can get involved in citizen science projects during your trip to contribute to conservation. You can share photos and videos of any noteworthy items with the GBRMPA eye on the reef app, including protected species, signs or bleaching, injured animals, or the presence of pestilent crown of thorns stars.
CoralWatch, a long-running CoralWatch program, provides you with a chart on which to record and match the colors of corals while you snorkel or dive. The results are then entered into CoralWatch’s app or website. Other citizen science initiatives include Redmap and Project Manta. Both involve the sharing of images taken during snorkeling and diving excursions in order to build databases for species that are not common to an area.
Participate in a cleaning program.
You can join a reef clean-up program if you’d like to contribute more directly to the health of the coral. Volunteers are welcomed at Eco Barge Clean Seas, which has removed almost 200,000kgs of marine debris along the Whitsunday’s coast and waters since 2009. The Tangaroa Blue Foundation offers volunteer opportunities for marine debris clean-ups in Australia. Many of these are centered around the Great Barrier Reef.
