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Coincidentally I went diving on the GBR last week, and from personal observation, it's in way, way, way worse condition that it was 20 years ago. There are mas

by grecy 4y ago

Coincidentally I went diving on the GBR last week, and from personal observation, it's in way, way, way worse condition that it was 20 years ago. There are massive sections of bleached coral, huge dead patches and way less fish life. Here's how it looked last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0h0j0PSqaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0h0j0PSqaY In 2015 the Aussie government tried to have it de-listed as a UNESCO site so they could dredge it (Nobody had ever asked UNESCO to be removed before). Though they failed, they are dredging all around it as close as possible, and the run-off from all the intensive mono-crop farming on the mainland is not helping either.

bamboozled 4y ago
Incredibly depressing. Wow
- ioseph 4y ago
  Not to try discount the damage (as someone who grew up in North Queensland it's absolutely heart breaking) but coral often looks worse/dead on camera. This is because of the colour shift as you you go deeper into water, a red filter (or light sourcee) is needed to capture the colours as you're seeing them.
bigbaguette 4y ago
And in the meantime, Victoria passes laws raising penalties for environmental protesters at logging sites. For the safety of workers they say.
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago
  Australia is just a few steps away from V for Vendetta.
  - prawn 4y ago
    I think the pot is boiling us frogs a lot, lot slower than that.
prawn 4y ago
I assume you're having to work hard to make a lap of Australia as intrepid as Africa!
- grecy 4y ago
  Not at all, I was very remote crossing the Simpson - 750km over seven days without seeing a soul, crossed 1,300 soft red sand dunes. And now plenty of mud and wild 4x4 in cape york (see today’s video for just the beginning) Epic mountains in Tasmania, plenty of wild stuff
  - prawn 4y ago
    I suspect I'd wager my life on that (here in winter at least) before some of your African scenarios. My neighbour is just finishing a Simpson crossing this week actually, though four-car convoy so has easy backup. I turned onto the Oodnadatta Track the other month (going up for Tourism Australia shoots) and got two flat tyres with one spare as the sun set. Same trip, one of my drones got taken by a wedge-tailed eagle. Diesel at $2.70/L. Not a cheap trip. The surrounds were very wet when I went through, but looks like you copped it muddy.
    - grecy 4y ago
      > I suspect I'd wager my life on that (here in winter at least) before some of your African scenarios. There isn't any "life wagering" going on. Please don't buy into the hyperbole. With a little planning and prep, Australia is extremely developed and safe. The chances of dying are very slim, unless a person really tries. Sat beacons and phones are cheap and easy to carry, and the family that recently got stuck in the Simpson had to wait all of 4 hours for a chopper to show up when they hit the button after getting hopelessly stuck in the mud. Africa is also not what you're making it out to be either. Don't take my word for it, talk to people that have spent a lot of time there. Good friends from Cairns drove right around like I did for 2 years, they went to 30+ countries, West Coast, Southern and all of East Coast. They loved it. In fact, they loved it so much they are right now shipping their Australian-plated vehicle back to Africa for another two year tour. They are perfectly middle class in Australia and live a great life there, but choose to spent another two years touring Africa. That should tell you a lot about what it's really like there. got two flat tyres with one spare as the sun set What tyres are you running, at what PSI, at what speed and with what load? Were they just punctures in the tread, or a failure of the sidewall?
roomor7 4y ago
Yes the chemicals from the cane fields is the biggest issue that constantly ignored due to commercial interests. Really quite sad. The crown of thorns does far less damage.
gautamcgoel 4y ago
Just wanna say I love your channel! Cool to see you on HN.
- grecy 4y ago
  Haha, thanks!!
somishere 4y ago
Cool video! I'm based in Cairns and work on and around the reef. Definitely appreciate the sentiment of the point you're making here (generally speaking it's true), but the argument is nuanced. It's nice to see visual evidence that backs up your personal beliefs. That said, it's also problematic to take a video of one tiny, tiny part of the great barrier reef and use it as evidence as to the state of the broader ecosystem (a system so large it would run almost the entire length of the US West Coast, consisting of over 4,000 reefs, some as large as 90km² with widely varying conditions). In fact, there are many groups who deny climate change, the science around it, and the decline of the GBR. In Australia, the IPA are one of these ... who visit pristine reefs (there are many pristine reefs) and take video to further these kind of bogus claims. On your video. First place was Fitzroy Island, which has a shallow, fringing reef around it. I've been visiting Fitzroy since the 80s and it has certainly changed over the years. That said, in-shore fringing reefs are not a good indication of much, as they are susceptible to pretty much every kind of disturbance. There is an area around the corner from where you were filming on the Island called Shark Fin bay that has 100% coral cover, probably due to slightly better currents (it's just outside of the lee of the island and few people go there). Your dive site was probably Milln or Flynn reef which are both outer reefs, about 40km off the coast. They are both in fairly good shape as far as tourist reefs go, with great visibility and decent coral cover. There's another reef very nearby called Hastings, which has good coral cover (and a lot of life, people often sight Mantas and other bigger stuff there) but the visibility is terrible due to sediment being picked up by currents. On all these reefs the condition would be entirely variable on different aspects of the same reef alone (i.e. north, south, east, west, windward / lee). Long story short, the science here is about data. Big data. And while highly local, anecdotal evidence can definitely play a part it has to be considered within the correct context. If you're interested, I built a tool[1] a couple of years ago based on surveys we were doing across the length of the reef. It gives a sense of coral cover, health, and the importance of individual reefs to the broader system. [1] https://greatreefcensus.org/detailed-reporting https://greatreefcensus.org/detailed-reporting
thematrixturtle 4y ago
It's worth remembering that the Great Barrier Reef stretches for 2,300 km, and your video covers a couple of hundred meters of that off one touristy island (Fitzroy) near the busiest town for GBR tourism (Cairns). If we're trading anecdotes, that looks better than my own visit also off Cairns about 20 years ago. I'm not saying that coral bleaching etc isn't a problem, in fact I don't see how we can avoid massive coral die-off if global warming continues, but we should also avoid generalizing "the reef is dying!" or "the reef is recovering!" based on samples of a single point.
phist_mcgee 4y ago
Cool to see you on hacker news! I've been following your travels for quite a while! Keep up the great content :)
- grecy 4y ago
  Cheers, happy to hear that!! :D

by grecy 4y ago

bamboozled 4y ago

Incredibly depressing. Wow

ioseph 4y ago
Not to try discount the damage (as someone who grew up in North Queensland it's absolutely heart breaking) but coral often looks worse/dead on camera. This is because of the colour shift as you you go deeper into water, a red filter (or light sourcee) is needed to capture the colours as you're seeing them.

bigbaguette 4y ago

And in the meantime, Victoria passes laws raising penalties for environmental protesters at logging sites. For the safety of workers they say.

tick_tock_tick 4y ago
Australia is just a few steps away from V for Vendetta.
- prawn 4y ago
  I think the pot is boiling us frogs a lot, lot slower than that.

prawn 4y ago

I assume you're having to work hard to make a lap of Australia as intrepid as Africa!

grecy 4y ago
Not at all, I was very remote crossing the Simpson - 750km over seven days without seeing a soul, crossed 1,300 soft red sand dunes. And now plenty of mud and wild 4x4 in cape york (see today’s video for just the beginning) Epic mountains in Tasmania, plenty of wild stuff
- prawn 4y ago
  I suspect I'd wager my life on that (here in winter at least) before some of your African scenarios. My neighbour is just finishing a Simpson crossing this week actually, though four-car convoy so has easy backup. I turned onto the Oodnadatta Track the other month (going up for Tourism Australia shoots) and got two flat tyres with one spare as the sun set. Same trip, one of my drones got taken by a wedge-tailed eagle. Diesel at $2.70/L. Not a cheap trip. The surrounds were very wet when I went through, but looks like you copped it muddy.
  - grecy 4y ago
    > I suspect I'd wager my life on that (here in winter at least) before some of your African scenarios. There isn't any "life wagering" going on. Please don't buy into the hyperbole. With a little planning and prep, Australia is extremely developed and safe. The chances of dying are very slim, unless a person really tries. Sat beacons and phones are cheap and easy to carry, and the family that recently got stuck in the Simpson had to wait all of 4 hours for a chopper to show up when they hit the button after getting hopelessly stuck in the mud. Africa is also not what you're making it out to be either. Don't take my word for it, talk to people that have spent a lot of time there. Good friends from Cairns drove right around like I did for 2 years, they went to 30+ countries, West Coast, Southern and all of East Coast. They loved it. In fact, they loved it so much they are right now shipping their Australian-plated vehicle back to Africa for another two year tour. They are perfectly middle class in Australia and live a great life there, but choose to spent another two years touring Africa. That should tell you a lot about what it's really like there. got two flat tyres with one spare as the sun set What tyres are you running, at what PSI, at what speed and with what load? Were they just punctures in the tread, or a failure of the sidewall?

roomor7 4y ago

Yes the chemicals from the cane fields is the biggest issue that constantly ignored due to commercial interests. Really quite sad. The crown of thorns does far less damage.

gautamcgoel 4y ago

Just wanna say I love your channel! Cool to see you on HN.

grecy 4y ago
Haha, thanks!!

somishere 4y ago

Cool video! I'm based in Cairns and work on and around the reef. Definitely appreciate the sentiment of the point you're making here (generally speaking it's true), but the argument is nuanced. It's nice to see visual evidence that backs up your personal beliefs. That said, it's also problematic to take a video of one tiny, tiny part of the great barrier reef and use it as evidence as to the state of the broader ecosystem (a system so large it would run almost the entire length of the US West Coast, consisting of over 4,000 reefs, some as large as 90km² with widely varying conditions). In fact, there are many groups who deny climate change, the science around it, and the decline of the GBR. In Australia, the IPA are one of these ... who visit pristine reefs (there are many pristine reefs) and take video to further these kind of bogus claims. On your video. First place was Fitzroy Island, which has a shallow, fringing reef around it. I've been visiting Fitzroy since the 80s and it has certainly changed over the years. That said, in-shore fringing reefs are not a good indication of much, as they are susceptible to pretty much every kind of disturbance. There is an area around the corner from where you were filming on the Island called Shark Fin bay that has 100% coral cover, probably due to slightly better currents (it's just outside of the lee of the island and few people go there). Your dive site was probably Milln or Flynn reef which are both outer reefs, about 40km off the coast. They are both in fairly good shape as far as tourist reefs go, with great visibility and decent coral cover. There's another reef very nearby called Hastings, which has good coral cover (and a lot of life, people often sight Mantas and other bigger stuff there) but the visibility is terrible due to sediment being picked up by currents. On all these reefs the condition would be entirely variable on different aspects of the same reef alone (i.e. north, south, east, west, windward / lee). Long story short, the science here is about data. Big data. And while highly local, anecdotal evidence can definitely play a part it has to be considered within the correct context. If you're interested, I built a tool[1] a couple of years ago based on surveys we were doing across the length of the reef. It gives a sense of coral cover, health, and the importance of individual reefs to the broader system. [1] https://greatreefcensus.org/detailed-reporting https://greatreefcensus.org/detailed-reporting

thematrixturtle 4y ago

It's worth remembering that the Great Barrier Reef stretches for 2,300 km, and your video covers a couple of hundred meters of that off one touristy island (Fitzroy) near the busiest town for GBR tourism (Cairns). If we're trading anecdotes, that looks better than my own visit also off Cairns about 20 years ago. I'm not saying that coral bleaching etc isn't a problem, in fact I don't see how we can avoid massive coral die-off if global warming continues, but we should also avoid generalizing "the reef is dying!" or "the reef is recovering!" based on samples of a single point.

phist_mcgee 4y ago

Cool to see you on hacker news! I've been following your travels for quite a while! Keep up the great content :)

grecy 4y ago
Cheers, happy to hear that!! :D