Meg1 I agree completely with most of your post. In these days of low returns, & high cost of chemical inputs, fertilizers, pesticides & & herbicides, any cane farmer using so much that he had a large run off of them, from his farm would not be in the industry.

I also agree about the misdirection of research dollars, but the same goes for all primary industries efforts, since they were engulfed by the environment department, & is unlikely to change any time soon. Roll on the revolution.

However you demean your post with the last bit, the rant about coral collectors.

Your post leads one to believe that you have some knowledge of the reef. If so you must be aware that there are hundreds of thousands of acres of the thing. A little collecting of coral is hard to notice, doing negligible damage, even in a restricted area.

I find it similar to the rants from WWF complaining about damage from anchor chains.

For a few years I was responsible for the maintenance of the Hook Island underwater observatory. This had a shelf about 3 meters wide just below the windows. This was covered with attractive coral, to give the small colourful fish some shelter from predators, & to look nice.

We had to supplement this coral a couple of times a year, not because it did not survive there quite happily, but to replace what the parrot fish had eaten.

We would often get this coral from the Hook, Hardy & Line reef complex, as Hardy lagoon offered suitable anchorage in rough weather.

Continued

Continued.

To set the scale, Hardy lagoon is about 7500 acres in area, & the reef enclosing it is over 40 nautical miles in length. Hook is 15 N miles long, & Line is about 20. We could have gathered all we needed from about 50 metres of reef, but would usually select from a couple of hundred. With in a year you could not find where we had been. It would take hundreds of collectors, working all year to mark even just this small area of the reef.

In nice weather weather we would go to the Net, Knuckle Kennedy area, which offered better fishing, & an even greater area of coral.

It was on some of these trips that I employed the polynesian navigation method of finding reefs & atolls, by looking for the turquoise colour of the reef reflected in the cloud.

I love the reef, but I am afraid that there is more romantic garbage poured on it, than even the Tasmanian rainforest

Virtually every year several tropical cyclones cross the GBR leaving in their path thousands of hectares of coral reduced to rubble. Along the coast occasional severe floods devastate near-shore reefs. Even a heavy rain during a minus tide and kill large areas of exposed corals. In all these instances the corals recover within a few years.

The amount of corals harvested by collectors is trivial in comparison to these natural mortalities and recovery is equally rapid. Over 99% of the GBR reefs are never harvested and even on the few reefs where harvesting does take place over 99% of the corals are not harvested. The harvested corals are necessarily small sized colonies to suit aquariums. They provide beauty, interest and appreciation of nature for millions of people. They are also a valuable renewable resource contributing importantly to the local economy.

The idea that coral collecting is a problem and should be prohibited is sheer ignorance. It is more an exhibit of righteous self-stimulation than any genuine concern for the reef. This is attested by the reaction of the eco-saviours to any suggestion that the “problems” they profess to be so concerned about may not be so severe as they claim. They are not just uninterested. They are positively angry at any such suggestion.

If Jennifer’s study confirmed that the Diuron was indeed killing the mangroves it would be greeted with great interest and widespread media coverage. That it presents really good news for the health of the ecosystem is of no interest to the eco-saviours and if confronted by it, they will grasp even the flimsiest argument to dismiss it. Their real commitment is only to the problems, not to the environment.

Walter Starck

Jennifer's work is true science; that is, a treatment of the facts without advocacy; as the IAC audit of the IPCC found in 2010 nearly 50% of the IPCC 'science' is Green group sourced; the other 50% from the peer-review system was found to have standards of certainty which were misleading and inappropriate.

The fundamental point here is that a dominant Green based criteria has emerged which relegates human interest to a distant second to a concept of 'nature'; based on this criteria any human encroachment of nature is bad. This is irrational because nature is just the product of a multitude of processes, physical, chemical and radiative. The relevant criteria should be what is good for humanity; that is, in this instance and indeed most areas of conflict, does the use of chemicals which have a benefit to agriculture justify PROVEN negative effects to a part of nature such as the GBR?

Part of that analysis should consider the fact that economically the GBR brings in large amounts of tourist $s. Such an approach would get rid of the notion of externalities and issues as to whether Coase's Theorem is applicable to dealing with pollution issues.

Thank you for comments by both Hasbeen and Walter Stark on coral removal from the reef...apparently the effects of coral removal and sale overseas (which is what I referred to in my post, not local usage or removal for tourism, research, etc.) has the effect that farmers have on the reef...close to none!
Which leads me to the conclusion that govt and tourism should also come to...if the reef is so fragile and at risk from those dreaded farmers, then all activity should cease on the reef...including tourism...until the GBR has sufficiently recovered.
Hopefully you will have picked up on the outrageousness of this suggestion...
Then you may also realise the outrageousness of the position that farmers are constantly finding themselves in...and ask yourselves why the onus is constantly on them to argue the case with WWF, Bob Brown/Green, govt bureaucrats and the 'feel good' greenies (as opposed to the genuine conservationists) that have the ear of both govt and media?
If the modelling is flawed (and I believe there is no doubt it is when university lecturers refuse to divulge their sources or base data), then surely it is the role of peers and university boards to refute that modelling and ensure that students are taught accurate material and the same is provided for general information and subjected to adequate peer review?
Farmers provide funding for good research, they don't always get it...cane toads were one offering from CSIRO and guess who wears the blame for the effects of that fiasco.
Sooner or later, academics must also acknowledge accountability and speak out as Jennifer, Peter, Walter Stark and others do against the rubbish...and govts must act on real science, not emotional heresay...including on the subject of the 'baby corals' referred to by another JCU academic...no emotive language there much?
tbc...

It would be an ideal therefore that industries like tourism and farming that are so closely aligned (tourists like to eat local produce too...) should work better together instead of the present situation which sees many in tourism throwing their hands up at the so-called effects of canefarming on the reef and jumping on the farmer-bashing bandwagon...btw, I like to visit the reef and have done so for over 40 years.
I've listened to the same 'sky is falling' clap-trap for longer than that and have come to the conclusion that 10 years in the scientific arena must work like 'dog' years...becaue the decade before destruction has been a recurring threat and hasn't happened from any of the earlier threats either...
As for farmers advocacy for science based work to be funded...there should be a clearer understanding of the powerlessness of current farmers in the scheme of things; in numbers, in buying power (average incomes in many primary industries do not give a rate of return that is remotely adequate or fair), in legislative safeguards, in media or govt representation and in isolation from populated areas.
These facts are sadly reflected in the much higher suicide rates in rural areas as only one example of the feelings of frustration and desperation in farming families...they simply can't do it all, especially while being beaten about the head by every tin pot group as well as those who should be representing them.
I'd hate to think of how many futile submissions have been completed by farmers trying to make a case...to have the govt of the day follow the same flawed policy with no justification for doing so.