[Previous entry: "Sydney Sea Hunters ......SS "Cornflakes""] [Next entry: "CORALS IN TROUBLE .......as seen in 2003"]

02/02/2006: "CORALS (continued) .........the most precious of all"

Huge hemispherical corals are very old. Hundreds of years old. Therefore you would expect them to be precious, just as giant tree’s in an old forest would be national treasures.

Something is killing portions of these corals at Great Detached Reef (near Raine Island) and whatever it is, it appears to me to be coming in across the reef in the prevailing current from the surf and deeper water.

These massive corals are in channels or gutters of the reef and all seem seriously effected, which is something I’ve never seen elsewhere before in my many years of photography along the Great Barrier Reef.

I noticed this in 2004 and made photographs to document it. Experts who later viewed the pictures were baffled as to what the causes may be, one scientist suggested the damage might be man-made.

When I returned to the same region in October 2005 the situation appeared considerably worse with almost or possibly all these huge solitary hemispherical corals in trouble with the same strange deep dead furrows running across them.

I have never seen these huge corals effected exactly like this elsewhere on the Great Barrier Reef.

Something very unusual is happening here which deserves a study.

A poison leaking from something dropped by a ship has crossed my thoughts. Nearby is deep ocean water.

The exact location of these corals has been logged for future scientific purposes for those interested.