Analysis Of The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is located in North East Australia off the coast of Queensland. It is world renowned for its stunning scenery and its flora and fauna diversity, it has also been acknowledged as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The Great Barrier Reef stretches across 344400km2 and includes thousands of individual reefs and hundreds of islands which are occupied by around 600 types of hard and soft coral, around 1625 varieties of fish, 3000 types of molluscs, more than 30 species of whales and dolphins, just to mention a few components that make up The Great Barrier Reefs vast diversity. In order to preserve and protect the unique array of ecological communities, habitats and species of The Great Barrier Reef for future generations

Lady Musgrave Island is slowly deteriorating due to environmental factors such as, pollutants being released into the air by tourism boats. This causes greenhouses gasses such as carbon dioxide to warm the earth’s atmosphere which causes the oceans water to warm which then leads to major coral bleaching events. The increase in water temperature also causes crown of thorns starfish infestations which further destroys surrounding coral. Another large factor of the destruction of the reef is disease that is being brought upon by tourism, some diseases that affect corals and fish are caused by pollutants in the water which can be produced by boats as well as dredging which is performed to provide larger ships an access to docks for both tourism and to transport cargo. Lady Musgrave Island is also affected by pollution caused by rubbish being left behind either on the island itself or by tourists on boats. Some components that destroy Lady Musgrave Island are unintentional for example when tourists go snorkelling they can accidentally damage coral by stepping or kicking it even though it was an accident eventually it causes immense destruction to the

This is a dramatic change from 2014 with most not mentioning coral bleaching to 2015 and 2016 where either everyone or most had stated that there was significant coral bleaching. There was also a significant increase in broken or damaged coral found with with all but two groups in 2014 mentioning broken or damaged coral, and all mentioning broken coral for 2015 and 206. However for 2014 and partially 2015 there as a lot of predation and crown of thorns starfish that was damaging the coral as well as drupella snails, but for 2016 there was no crown of thorns starfish or drupella snails and only one group mentioning predation, the amount of damaged coral in 2016 would then have to be either caused by natural disasters or by tourism in the lagoon either by the boats or tourists themselves. In 2014 and 2015 no one mentioned diseases present in the coral but for 2016 three groups did this would be caused by the pollution of dredging and boats for tourism. Through the use of Rapid Monitoring Surveys it has been concluded that the increase of tourism at Lady Musgrave Island has had a minor negative effect on the islands marine