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The reef is under immense heat stress due to climate change.
Helping to protect them would go a long way.
The newly identified reef could contain many species new to science.
A citizen science project that aims to help the world's corals.
Scientists installed underwater speakers in dead or dying coral which played sounds typical of healthy reefs. Wildlife soon flocked back.
A giant raft of light rocks is heading towards Australia -- and that's a good thing.
The Great Barrier Reef's future is bleak.
It's one bad news after the other for the coral reef.
This is just adding more salt to the wound.
Can we please call these things Star Destroyers? Please?
The Great Barrier Reef may be facing its worse threat yet.
The world's largest coral system is dying, and it's all our fault.
This successful first trial might one day save the reef.
It's incredible what you can discover from your own bedroom these days.
He dived into the blue hole himself and inside found striking coral species.
Millions of people enjoy diving around reefs every year.
The Great Barrier Reef, which stretches 2,000km (1,200 miles) along the coast, is the world’s largest living ecosystem. Yet it's being threatened and every year the coral retreats at the hand of pollution, tourism, farming and pests. One such pest is the crown-of-thorns starfish which attaches itself to the coral and destroys it with its venomous thorns. Various pest control measures have been tried, but none proved more effective than injecting the animals with vinegar. James Cook University researchers tried out various concentrations of vinegar, needle size and injection locations until they found the sweet spot for a 100% kill rate within 48 hours of contact. Widespread and sustained (you have to control the starfish every year following breeding season) could thus help save the Great Barrier Reef, or at least buy time until we address the more serious causes leading to its destruction.
Picture this: A city under siege. Many of the outlying buildings are old, dry, lifeless shells of their former beauty as nearly 50 percent of the population is wiped out, consumed by ravenous invaders. And the only hope of lifting the siege lies with a poison injecting, yellow robot.
The Great Barrier Reef, which stretches 2,000km (1,200 miles) along the coast, is the world’s largest living ecosystem. Environmental groups are pushing to get the reef listed as “in danger” by the UNESCO, so that the Australian government would have to work harder to protect it from various dangers such as pollution, dredging, fishing and […]
The Great Barrier Reef is the the biggest single structure made by living organisms; so vast that it can be seen from space. It hasn’t been fairing too well, however, and in the past 30 years alone its surface covered by coral has been reduced to half, as reported previously by ZME. A recent study proves […]
According to the most comprehensive study ever carried out on the World Heritage Site, findings have shown that damage caused by storms, crown-of-thorns starfish and bleaching have resulted in more than half of the amount of coral covering reefs being cut in half since 1985 and will likely continue to decline if immediate countering steps are not made. Australia’s […]
Scientists from the United States and Australia have teamed up in a desperate attempt to find new solutions to the Great Barrier Reef problem, which threatens to go beyond the point of no return. They are currently trying to save disappearing species by freezing coral eggs and sperm, so that instead of becoming extinct, species […]