'Concerns for the future' - climate change ruining world's largest living organism, Australia's Great Barrier Reef

November 9, 2017

The dying reef is bad news for those reliant on tourist dollars.

The impact of climate change on Australia's Great Barrier Reef is starting to hit home for those who make their livelihoods from it.

Some areas on the north Queensland coast are almost entirely dependent on the tourism the reef brings.

"We do have massive concerns for the future," tour operator John Edmondson said.

"The bottom line is I think you have to have a good reef a really healthy reef and good coral to be able to show people, that's the key thing everything else is built around," he said.

Climate change means the waters have warmed, leading to major coral bleaching events in consecutive years at the reef.

"The Great Barrier Reef is 23,000 kilometres long. It's a massive system and in 2016 the bleaching event led to 24 per cent of the reef dying," marine biologist Taylor Simpkins said.

For locals reliant on tourist dollars it's bad news.

"We are very conscious of the importance of reef tourism it's 80 per cent of our local economy," Douglas Shire Mayor Julia Leu said.

It's not all negative though, with some of the coral starting to regenerate, leading to hope there won't be an unprecedented third straight year of bleaching.

The latest data is tempered by the ongoing threat of climate change and a fear the reef will lose the biodiversity that's long made it so special.

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