I attempted a guilt-free trip to the Great Barrier Reef

It’s a convergence of more than 600 known types of coral – visible from outer space, and forming the largest living structure on the planet, home to thousands of marine species. Since the advent of scuba, the Great Barrier Reef has been a universal allegory for nature’s beauty and abundance, surpassing even the rainforest for biodiversity.

But today the Reef is one of the most conspicuous victims of anthropogenic climate change. In 2024 it experienced its fifth major coral bleaching event in eight years – the most extreme on record. A study published by Nature in August revealed the Reef’s ocean temperatures over the past decade are the highest in four centuries, calling global warming an “existential threat” to this wonder of the world. Weeks later, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) published its Outlook Report. “The window of opportunity to secure a positive future for the Reef is closing rapidly,” it read. Unless international commitments to limit temperatures to 1.5°C of warming are met, its future looks “very poor”. 

Are we really prepared to let the Reef die on our watch? I arrived in the tropical city of Cairns, in far north Queensland, in July to experience how travel can be part of the solution rather than the problem. A wave of citizen-science initiatives dedicated to reef protection, conservation and reconstitution has launched in recent years. Among them are Tourism Tropical North Queensland’s Guardian of the Reef platform and Citizens of the Reef, which seek to take this campaign global. Whether they can mitigate the carbon footprint of getting here (whether offset or not) is yet to be discerned. 

Although the term Great Barrier Reef implies a monolith, it comprises roughly 3,000 individual reefs. I have signed up with the family-run operator Passions of Paradise’s “Be A Marine Biologist” experience, with which I’ll spend a day at two sites on Hastings, a horseshoe-shaped reef submerged 50km north-east of Cairns. 

I’m here to contribute to data collection for GBRMPA. My task requires me to leap off the wraparound deck of the Passions III catamaran, diver’s slate and pencil in hand, ready to survey key species (rare ones or those that indicate reef health) and document the state of the coral.

Several pairs of butterflyfish flutter past, a blaze of yellow and white stripes with markings resembling huge eyes on their “wings” that deter predators with their size. Butterflyfish are monogamous and protect each other – one keeps watch as the other dines on polyps (the animals that make up coral); their refined taste reflects the coral’s health (healthy corals make good eating). 

I also swim by schools of surgeonfish and parrotfish with scales as vibrant as macaw feathers. These fish prevent turf algae from smothering coral – an issue that has been exacerbated by climate change. “Herbivores are the ocean’s lawnmowers, some of the most important fish out there,” Le’a Dawes, a master reef guide, tells me back on the boat. If you listen closely, their grazing sounds like that of a horse. 

Despite its plant-like appearance, coral is an animal related to jellyfish and sea anemones. It comes in a profusion of shapes and sizes, both hard and soft. Coral polyps alone do not gain enough energy to survive or build a reef that is, like this one, the size of Italy, so they exist in a symbiotic relationship with microscopic algae known as zooxanthellae that live inside the polyps’ tissues, providing the coral with up to 90 per cent of its food through photosynthesis.

All living coral has a green-brown colour thanks to the zooxanthellae, though many produce protein pigments that allow them to dazzle in shades of purple, blue and red. Changes in the environment – light; acidification from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; a one-degree rise in temperature – can upset the relationship, causing the polyps to expel the zooxanthellae, leaving ghostly white skeletons behind. Bleached coral can recover, but prolonged elevated temperatures coupled with back-to-back cyclones, as Australia has witnessed recently, cause it to starve and make it more vulnerable to disease. 

Amid the wildlife, which both contributes to a healthy reef and depends on it, we discover roughly 2 per cent of coral is recovering from bleaching and a further 2 per cent is already dead. Coral’s relative resilience isn’t permission for apathy; it should be seen as an urgent call to arms. “The most recent bleaching event is the first to be fully monitored for the duration,” Dawes says. “Twenty-six tour operators were doing surveys and taking photos daily; reef health updates were coming in real time.”

GBRMPA’s chief scientist, Dr Roger Beeden, goes so far as to say: “No one knows the Reef better than the travel industry because they are out there every day.” It has also been instrumental, he says, in launching a programme to control the crown-of-thorns starfish, a major threat to the Reef; each one can devour up to 10sq m of coral a year. Studies suggest crown-of-thorns outbreaks occur in 15-year cycles; the Reef is on the brink of another, making the programme more urgent than before.

But despite the work being done, aided in part by tourism, I am still left wondering if I and the two million people who visit the Reef each year should be here at all. “Market research has shown us that when people better understand the Reef having experienced it firsthand, it amplifies their pro-environmental values,” Dr Beeden says. What’s more, as a World Heritage Site, the Reef is highly protected; tourist access is limited to around 7 per cent of its total. “I would contend that in the Great Barrier Reef, tourism is imperfect but a net positive.”

Consistent observation, like that both Dawes and Dr Beeden describe, is a way of life for Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples – the traditional owners of the Great Barrier Reef region. Their connection to this land and sea can be traced back 60,000 years. I meet Gavin Singleton, a Yirrganydji man who is a member of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Traditional Owner Advisory Group, established to promote First Nations-led stewardship of the Reef. “It’s about bringing two knowledge systems together to give us a better perspective on the Reef,” says Singleton. “Western management approaches tend to isolate land from sea, whereas my people think holistically; everything is connected.”

The traditional owners have an unparalleled knowledge of the Reef and the travel industry is waking up to their insights. Adventure tourism company Experience Co runs day trips that incorporate Indigenous wisdom. For a bespoke experience, the First Nations-owned Mandingalbay Authentic Indigenous Tours offers private charters.

On any given morning, Cairns Pier provides a snapshot of how one billion people worldwide depend on coral reefs for everything from coastal protection to food and income. Throngs file onto boats offering variations on diving and snorkel tours, flanked by two major polluters – a private motor yacht and a cruise ship the size of an apartment block.

Twenty-five kilometres south-east of Cairns, at Fitzroy Island, I visit the volunteer-run non-profit Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre. I spruce up their tanks alongside veterinary students. Unless required for medical reasons, touching the turtles is strictly off-limits, but I have a rare opportunity to administer physiotherapy to Shelby, a male green sea turtle recovering from a flipper amputation after he was hit by a boat propeller. My marine biologist guide, Edona, teaches me his language: a forward paddle means “keep going”.

Most of the turtles at the centre are suffering from “floating syndrome”, which is caused by ingesting plastic that creates a build-up of gas, rendering the turtle unable to dive to lower depths. The turtles can starve to death, and become easier targets for marine traffic and predators such as sharks and crocodiles. The centre largely relies on the goodwill of boaters who spot the turtles trapped on the water’s surface and bring them in.

Since opening in 2000, the number of former patients released into the wild has climbed from around 30 per cent to as much as 90 per cent. Edona and I ended my time on Fitzroy Island by conducting a GBRMPA “Eye On The Reef” survey, which allows anyone who visits to record information via an app. I record an encounter with a healthy but critically endangered hawksbill turtle in the open ocean.

A one-hour flight away, on Lizard Island, I meet Dr Anne Hoggett and her husband Dr Lyle Vail, who have been the co-directors of the Australian Museum’s Lizard Island Research Station (LIRS) for 34 years. A painting of sea creatures by the First Nations artist RD Savage hangs on one wall. Dr Hoggett is a big advocate of tourism in the area. “It’s wonderful having visitors,” she says. “The more people understand how incredible reefs are, the more people care about them.”

Since LIRS opened its doors in 1973, tens of thousands of scientists and students have used it as a base for research, and 2,700 scientific publications have been produced from studies conducted here. Breakthroughs from the 1990s continue to excite Dr Hoggett. “Back then people thought fish larvae floated and followed currents, when in fact they are incredibly strong swimmers,” she explains. “They hear and smell reefs and choose when to settle – usually at night to avoid predators, and many of them come back to the reef where their parents were. This was a game-changer for managing Reef fisheries.”

We walk through the laboratory where a student from Japan is observing the behavioural patterns of cleaner fish: a crown-of-thorns starfish is displayed ominously in a tank. Dr Hoggett thinks some of the efforts to “save” the Great Barrier Reef are well-intentioned but too often they can be counterproductive. “Spraying coral spawn onto dead reefs; putting shade cloths over healthy reefs to stop ultraviolet radiation; it may look good in photos, but these are stopgap measures; they can mislead the public into thinking they are already effective solutions,” she says. “Coral bleaching and cyclones are carbon signals. People need to tell our leaders that drilling for oil and gas and coal mining needs to stop.”

Aside from a sailboat, the only way for travellers to stay on the island and visit LIRS is the Lizard Island Resort, a constellation of palatial ocean-view suites. I spend as much time as possible in the water. I come face-to-face with reef and lemon sharks, stewards of a balanced food web; both are nonchalant about my presence. I glide over a garden of giant clams, each one capable of filtering 2,000 litres of water a day. Sea cucumbers are vacuuming the sea floor, their digestive processes countering ocean acidification. Each intimate encounter with a key reef species serves as a reminder of the interconnectivity – and our own symbiotic relationship with this increasingly fragile ecosystem. 

Liam Freeman travelled as a guest of Tourism Australia and Tourism Tropical North Queensland (TTNQ). To learn more about Great Barrier Reef conservation efforts visit gbrmpa.gov.au and barrierreef.org. TTNQ’s Guardian of the Reef platform for reef-positive travel is available in Australia, the US and UK