One of the planet’s greatest living wildernesses - the Great Barrier Reef - was declared no more by leading environmental writer Rowan Jacobsen.
Mr Jacobsen wrote: “The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old."
The posthumous tribute to the UNESCO site which stretches for over 1.400 miles of Queensland’s north-west coast - contains 1,625 species of fish, 3,000 molluscs and 30 different types of whale and dolphin - came as scientists carried out a major investigation into the reef’s greatest enemy – bleaching.
Coral bleaching is what happens when environmental stress impacts on the “symbiotic” relationship between the rock-like living creatures that form the reefs and microscopic algae that give them their incredible colours.
When stressful factors, particularly the warming up of ocean waters because of climate change, take effect, the corals expel the algae, leaving them to become transparent skeletons. Without the algae, the coral then simply starve.
