What a joke, Vade Mecum. First you claim there is no shallow water south of the GBR and manage to overlook Moreton Bay, where the corals are strugling because of the cool weather. But then, according to you, there is no shallow water at Burleigh, Greenmount, Fingal, Kingscliff, Cabarita, Bogangar, Brunswick, Byron Bay, Broken & Lennox, Ballina, Coffs. Give us a break.

Then you claim the sea level rise will be too gradual to benefit corals. But in the very next para you claim the rate of change is too fast for the corals to adapt. Bollocks.

Perseus,
It should have been clear that I meant 'suitable' shallow water. Do you think a few little headlands dotted down the coast are significant enough to support a whole coral reef ecosystem, with the same ecological ‘goods and services’ that they currently do now? Some of those headlands are smaller than an average sized reef and remember there are about ~2,900 reefs in the GBR. Do you know if those headlands will support the same diversity of species and provide the same range of habitats? Will all coral species recruit to that granite and basalt etc surface? Will they be able to compete with and how will they alter the existing communities? Will those headlands support viable populations of corals? Will the corals that colonise those headlands support the diverse range of ‘interstitial’ species of fish, invertebrates etc that use corals as habitat? Suitable temperature regime is just one of many variables, and it is rather dilettantish to presume that temperature is the only factor that regulates the distribution of corals.

Sure a few coral colonies might be able colonise those headlands, but I doubt the headlands will be able to support anything that resembles the ecological functioning of the GBR. So I still struggle to see how “The GBR is likely to extend its range further south” and how that would “benefit coral reefs”.

By rate of climate change being too fast – I didn’t mean sea level. I meant the effects of more pertinent variables like temperature, CO2 etc. I wasn’t talking about corals adapting to sea level rise.

Also, I wouldn’t trust a physicist to tell you that the corals in Moreton Bay are ‘struggling’, do you have a reference I that I could read about that?

Posters may wish to log on to the Marine Conservation Biology Institute (US) to find their scientists claiming that:

1........The oceans are more acidic today then they have been in 650,000 years

2........ 1 million tonnes per hour of CO2 now enter the oceans - 10 times more than the natural rate

3........500 billion tonnes of CO2 absorbed by oceans since the Industrial Revolution

4........Acidity reduces the abundance of the right chemicals forms of a calcium carbonate to which corals and other sea animals need to build shells and skeletons

5........Acidified waters tend to asphyxiate animals that require a lot of oxygen

6........The lethal acidification of oceans, with the subsequent reduction in ph, will not be arrested until pollutant industries cease fouling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide

7........The change in modern surface ocean ph will be much more extreme that it was 55 million years ago.

8........Algae, bacteria etc are already proliferating at the expense of marine animals and corals.

Now, in my region, last month, 4,000 birds falling out of the sky in Esperance - dead! Autopsy found no evidence of viruses though poisoning by heavy metals was "inconclusive!"

This week another 1,000 or so dead birds in different areas around Kelleberin, Kukerin and Kulin.

I recall temperatures of 112 degrees fahrenheit when I was a kid though no evidence of birds dying from the heat then.

What say thee, Jennifer?

I omitted to advise Perseus that the MCBI also advise that cold waters absorb more CO2 than warm waters.

Since this thread is on the fate of our coral reefs, global warming is not as relevant as the excessive human induced emissions of CO2 which is polluting, acidifying and subsequently destroying marine life in our oceans.