Great Barrier Reef in Verge of Extinction: Scientists

The largest living ecosystem, the Great Barrier Reef, stretched 1,430 miles along Australia’s coast is ‘dead or dying and almost all of it is on the brink of extinction’, said the scientists. The scientists have also warned the health of the ecosystem, assessing it’s increasingly bleaking conditions.

In another publication from the Australian ministry, the corals of the Great Barrier Reef is also suffering from bleaching- a condition leaving the coral to push out the algae inside, making it white. Apart from the outrageous effect of global warming, the strong El Nino is also playing a master role in bleaching and death of the corals.

Professor Terry Hughes, conveyor of the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce that conducts aerial exhibition of world heritage sites, said: “We've never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before. In the northern Great Barrier Reef, it's like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once.” Hughes also added that almost 50 percent of the total coral is already dead or dying.

Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt, in this context, asserted: “There were some who said that the worst had passed. We rejected that, and they were wrong.” Even the UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee that denied the Great Barrier Reef in the endangered list but continued their concern for its future.

Environmentalists across the globe, who accounted global warming and El Nino as the reason behind the loss, also have considered the usage of coal and coal-fire in Australia as long term reason.

The Great Barrier Reef is a location to draw in a huge amount of tourist, in a fear of tourism business loss, are reluctant to publish the bleached pictures of the corals. The tourism companies even have barred the entry of media and politicians in the bleached area fearing its impact on tourism, said reports. Apart from the environmental impacts and tourism affects of bleaching, half a billion people from Australia is dependent for their livelihood on the corals and as many as $30 million people’s income is at stake, said reports.