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19/07/2008: "BEAUTIFUL EX-CORAL REEF ...... off Mission Beach, Queensland"
This is a real picture that would be expensive to replicate. How can you tell? The snorkeler is not a model posing in position for the camera. The ripples on the surface show he is moving. A posed model would not have water movement near him or her.
Does it matter? Not a bit. But in this case it is a REAL picture, not staged for advertising purposes.
If this picture were on a travel brochure it would not say, as I will here, and with 100% honesty, that ALL THAT BEAUTIFUL CORAL (IS TODAY), DEAD AS DOOR-NAILS.
Just after the picture was taken, the Crown of Thorns starfish had a great feed here. This is/was Ellison Reef near Mission Beach, south of Cairns, Queensland, Australia.
It did not effect tourists at all - they go to different locations. Nobody speaks about dead reefs.
"Anyway, there's plenty of coral in Queensland". the skeptics have said.
An 'expert' might comment that coral reefs regenerate - indicating everything will return to how it was, eventually.
These are just words we like to hear - distorted words they certainly are.
The coral pictured at Ellison Reef will never look like this again, never ever. It's too close to civilization.
That reef is finished in this form.
Something else, a poorer version, will replace it. Not as beautiful, but nobody will know the difference. That's the way it is.
Don't be fooled that everything (the coral reef ecology) is OK and will stay like this forever.
It won't and it can't. Learn to live with the changes. (from fathomOZ.com)
