Fresh visit to the Great Barrier Reef in its death throes

Several decades ago, academic researchers found that threats to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) attract media attention, generous funding for research, and public recognition for themselves. Eco-threats began to eclipse basic research in funding and research interest. Today, we have a whole generation of researchers whose entire experience of the GBR has been in the context of finding, investigating and promoting environmental “threats” and they tend to perceive every fluctuation of nature as evidence of them.