Boffin adamant no need for panic over Reef

A GEOPHYSICIST who specialises in coral reefs and ­climate study has challenged the grim warnings of fellow scientist Charlie Veron, who wants Gold Coast youth to pursue medicine and agriculture to help survive a global warming disaster

Professor Peter Ridd on The Strand in Townsville. He says fears for the Great Barrier Reef have been overblown, maintaining the reef goes through cycles of massive coral loss. Picture: CAMERON LAIRD

A GEOPHYSICIST who specialises in coral reefs and ­climate study has challenged the grim warnings of fellow scientist Charlie Veron, who wants Gold Coast youth to pursue medicine and agriculture to help survive a global warming disaster.

James Cook University’s Professor Peter Ridd says the fears of Dr Veron, the former Australian Institute of Marine Science chief scientist known widely as “the Godfather of Coral’’, and other marine biologists in predicting the death of the Great Barrier Reef are overblown.

Dr Veron said coral bleaching has killed half of all coral colonies on the reef in the past two years and the impact is being felt in Gold Coast waters.

He predicted fishing industries would fail as reefs died worldwide and said the young would curse current generations for leaving them a world suffering ecological chaos as carbon dioxide-fuelled climate change took hold.

But Prof Ridd said the southern Great Barrier Reef had three times more coral than it did in 2011 when it was struck by cyclones.

He said the northern reef had lost coral over the same time, but “the amount of coral has remained more or less the same for 25 years’’.

“There is no good reason to claim there has been a reduction in coral since Captain Cook sailed up this coast,’’ he said. “The fact is the reef goes through cycles of massive coral loss due to cyclones, crown of thorns starfish and bleaching events, all of which are natural, followed by periods of strong recovery.

“The scientists squeal when it is damaged and are mute when it grows back.’’

Prof Ridd said climate change was occurring slowly “as it always has’’ but temperatures now were not particularly special or unprecedented.

He said it was probable there was already an impact on marine life around the Gold Coast, which would be growing faster due to a slightly warmer climate than a century ago.

“But it is likely growing more slowly than 5000 years ago when the climate was probably a couple of degrees hotter than today,’’ he said.

“If the climate warms, the coral reefs of Moreton Bay will grow a little faster and be a bit more impressive, but sorry – it will never be like the Great Barrier Reef.’’

In a book titled Climate Change: The Facts 2017, Prof Ridd contributed a chapter that argues coral bleaching is a defence mechanism learned over evolution, and that bleaching and cyclonic destruction usually claim large amounts of corals he describes as “weeds of the reef’’.