Breathing life back into the Great Barrier Reef

Lady Elliot Island is just one example of how the two are working together. But while I’m thrilled to be snorkelling at a site where healthy coral and vibrant fish are found in abundance, there’s always a lingering sense of disappointment that it doesn’t look hyper-saturated, like the images you’d see in a David Attenborough documentary or in tourism videos.

Fortunately, I found the antidote for this particular affliction back on the mainland, in a large farm shed on the banks of the Burnett River. Inside, long troughs filled with moving saltwater – which had been carefully pH-balanced and was temperature-controlled – are home to thousands of individual corals. Under the glow of the facility’s UV lights, their true colour and characteristics are evident, resulting in something closer to my idealised image of the Great Barrier Reef.

I walked between the rows of tanks, peering down at each specimen in the water. Coral that could only be described as Play-Doh red in colour sat beside scolymia, an Australian hard coral prized for its vibrant neon hues. Other flower-like varieties blossomed under the water’s surface, their delicate tendrils glowing in shades of fluorescent blue-green and millennial pink. It was like a scene from the film Avatar – beautiful and altogether otherworldly.

This is Monsoon Aquatics, Australia’s largest coral farm. Since 2008, this family-owned business has supplied hobbyists and
aquariums with coral from its locations in Darwin and Cairns, and it has the ability to produce 2,500 ‘fragments’ of coral each week. Its newest location, in Bundaberg, isn’t just its largest; it also marks Monsoon’s recent expansion into aquaculture.

“We need to be identifying the types of corals that are resilient to change, whether that be climate change, extreme [land-based] run-off or other changes that are happening out in the oceans,” said Daniel Kimberley, Monsoon Aquatics’ founding director. “And in an aquaculture facility, we have the potential to produce millions of corals at scale.”

Much like tree nurseries are used for reforestation projects, in the future it is hoped that Monsoon Aquatics will be a key player in replanting the Great Barrier Reef.

“The ultimate goal is to be a piece of the puzzle in reef restoration,” explained Brooke Kimberley, the company’s business manager. She led me into the nursery where they are developing the technology to get the corals to breed on demand.

This is just one of dozens of tour operators essentially being run as social entrepreneurships, with the reef’s health at the forefront. Nearly every day, boats depart for the reef from Cairns, Port Douglas and Bundaberg, taking with them not only tourists, but also scientists and scuba divers who painstakingly survey the reef and reattach coral fragments at nursery sites. The Port Douglas-based Wavelength Reef Cruises, for example, has planted more than 65,000 corals across 27 sites since 2018. In total, Queensland’s tourism operators have installed over 100 reef coral nurseries, propagating hundreds of thousands of corals across the Great Barrier Reef.

Research is underway at Lady Elliot Island, too, where on-site marine biologists such as Shackleton survey coral health, tag turtles, track manta rays and sample the water.

“If we didn’t have tourists coming out here, then the resort wouldn’t be able to have a scientific team,” said Shackleton. She told me that she remains optimistic about the future of the reef, despite the hot and dry El Niño summer that lies ahead.

“The reef is always going to be here,” said Shackleton, “but it’s definitely going to be different from the way that we see it today.”

With her words in my ears, I donned my wetsuit and flippers one last time before heading home. From the dark below, a green sea turtle appeared. It saw me but didn’t change tack. Instead, it swam directly under the length of my body, its hard shell close enough to touch and a gentle reminder that even in the dark, hope can appear.