GBR Science Summaries

It is currently fashionable to use the adjectives “delicate” and “fragile” in describing coral reefs and their ecology. This is misleading and is based more on assumption than actual assessment. Much of our present understanding of ecology comes from the study of relatively simple terrestrial communities. In such communities a few key species tend to play a critical role. Like links of a chain, if any one is disrupted the whole collapses. Such an idea applied to the myriad species and interrelationships on coral reefs results in an imaginary house of cards, a fragile structure threatened with catastrophe from the slightest interference.