Thank the Lord that we haven't had another visit from Obama. He always was, and is now more so, in worse nick than the Great Battier Reef is.

WTF?

The AIMS survey was World’s biggest coral survey. So I'll take more note of it rather than the author's manta board experience back in the 1970s.

The Aerial surveys showed three quarters of 1,080 reefs assessed had some bleaching. On 40% of these reefs, more than half the corals were white.

Mentions of Obama and US elections thrown into the discussion reeks of a "shell game" misdirection.

The author states: "There should be no coral at all if those reports were true." Well his assessments are clearly wrong and he clearly has trouble interpreting AIMS results. The fact that author is wrong does not make AIMS wrong.

The AIMS report clearly states "The worst damage lined up with the highest levels of heat stress." Well there have been 6 bleaching events since 2017. There had only been 2 going back to 1986.

The same thing is happening in WA. An AIMS report on that area states: "There has been little reprieve this time for any of our northwest reefs. Areas which had given us hope because they’d rarely or not bleached before like the Rowley Shoals, north Kimberley and Ningaloo have been hit hard this time."

The author's observations in the 1970s have little to contribute when stacked up against the data supplied in AIMS reports.

John Mikkelsen, your argument rests on a straw man and cherry-picked statistics.

No scientist said the Reef would be “dead by now.” The warnings have always been about increasing frequency and severity of bleaching and long-term decline, not instant disappearance. “It’s still here” is not a rebuttal.

1. Coral cover is not the same as reef health. AIMS notes the Reef is “volatile” - big gains can be wiped out in one heatwave or cyclone. Recent high cover is dominated by fast-growing acropora, which is also the most vulnerable and already bleaching again.

2. Short-term rebounds are not proof of safety. Before climate change, the Reef had decades to recover between events. Now mass bleaching hits every 4–6 years, too soon for full recovery.

3. Peter Ridd’s claims are fringe. His dismissal was not for “wrongthink” but repeated breaches of conduct, and his GBR arguments are criticised for selective use of data and ignoring biodiversity loss, species shifts, and structural decline.

4. Personal snorkelling anecdotes prove nothing. Parts of the Reef can look spectacular while other regions are in severe decline - that’s exactly why systematic monitoring exists.

The reef may not be gone, but it’s less resilient than ever, and pretending short-term recovery means all is well is like claiming a patient’s fine because their fever went down for a day.

I find it just so pointless bringing up the ill-health of the reef yet ignoring the destructive impact of "recreational" fishing & mass tourism.

Gee isn't it amazing that some of the usual lefty sycophants completely ignore the informed comments by very experienced reef scientist Dr Peter Ridd and resort to the usual ad hominem attacks. The proof is in the pudding so to speak and the GBR will still be thriving long after they've flown the (chicken) coop. (PS check the science - coral bleaching does not necessarily equate to coral death, Reefs survived and thrived when temperatures were much higher and CO2 levels were 10 times more than today's historically low (in geological terms) of a mere 0.04 percent.

Mikko2,

Nobody “ignored” Ridd. his views were addressed directly, including why they’re criticised within marine science for selective use of data and focusing on short-term rebounds while downplaying long-term resilience loss. That’s not an ad hominem, that’s evaluating credibility and methodology.

And why anyone would supposedly need to "resort" to ad hominems when all the evidence points one way is beyond me.

Bleaching doesn’t always equal death, true, but mass bleaching events are now so frequent that recovery windows are too short for full regrowth, and the 2025 AIMS report explicitly warns the Reef is “volatile” with record coral losses in both north and south.

As for “reefs survived in hotter, high-CO2 eras” - those changes happened over thousands of years, giving ecosystems time to adapt or shift geographically. The current problem is the rate of change: ocean temperatures and acidity are shifting faster than corals can keep up, which is why bleaching frequency has exploded since the 1980s.

Pointing to geological timescales to dismiss current impacts is like saying a human can survive 45-degree heat because our ancestors evolved in Africa - it ignores the difference between adaptation over millennia and rapid stress over decades.