From the age of eight, I have been infatuated with Australia, largely due to its beautiful waterfalls, capturing scenery, and, of course, the Great Barrier Reef. I am extremely close to my grandmother and after noticing my love for Australia, she promised that for my high school graduation present, we would visit Australia for at least two weeks. The moment she promised me this, I created a list of all the places we could visit, and at the top of my list was the Great Barrier Reef. This was largely due to my love for swimming as a child, combined with my grandmothers love for oceanic wildlife. When reports started emerging about the destruction now evident in the Great Barrier Reef, I was extremely shocked and terrified my grandmother and I would not get to experience this natural wonder in all of its beauty. When assigned this research project, I knew I wanted to study the destruction of the reef, due to both my personal interest in the topic, and wanting to know more about the impacts of human-provoked climate change on our environment.
Before researching, I hypothesized that climate change was a major contributor to the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, as I had prior knowledge that ocean temperature had been rising and began thinking this could have been a significant factor. I was also interested in what impacts this may have on the surrounding environment, so I decided to create a question modeled on causes and possible effects, as well as structure my essay in this way. I was expecting to find a significant amount of in depth research on how climate change and other variables, such as overfishing, contributed to this destruction, and was surprised to find most articles were extremely vague and repetitive of the same broad information. I was also expecting that many would have developed research on how the destruction of the reef will create negative ripple effects in the surrounding environment, but this was extremely difficult to find. Sadly, the majority of articles, even scientific articles, focused more on the impact the destruction would have on tourism. This development in my research led me to the conclusion that the majority of people reporting on the destruction of the reef care more about the reefs use as a money-maker than preserving the world heritage site.
Another shocking development that occurred throughout my research centers around the response of the Australian government and counterarguments to the reef's destruction. I was shocked to learn that the Australian government is funding and allowing projects that put the reef at a higher risk for bleaching than before, given the international backlash when the government removed the Great Barrier Reef from the UN watch list. After finding a strong counterargument, a Senator who claims that the reef is not dying of human-provoked causes and that the reef is being wrongly pronounced dead for political motive, I realized that until the government and the political parties within it can find a common ground and cease arguing about who has what motive, they will not come together and conduct research on the causes and help minimize further damage, and the reef will remain at the will of human destruction.
Though not many developments have occurred since conducting my research, experts announced on November 29th that an average of 67% of coral on a long northern stretch of the reef has died, supplying further legitimacy to the argument that the reef is undergoing drastic, negative changes that we must further research and help combat ("Warnings from the Great Barrier Reef").
Work Cited:
"Warnings from the Great Barrier Reef." Milford Daily News. Milford Daily News, 2016. Web. 02 Jan. 2017.
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