How travelers can help protect the Great Barrier Reef’s corals

Like a gardener surveying his veggie patch, Alan Wallish tells me the cabbages are running amok again: “They’ve become so dense. We really need a cyclone to come through and break them up so new things can grow in between.” He beckons me to follow him to the next plot.

Instead of overalls, Alan has donned a wetsuit, snorkel and flippers to show me around Hastings Reef, a horseshoe-shaped expanse of the outer Great Barrier Reef some 30 miles off Cairns. As co-founder of ecotourism operator Passions of Paradise, Alan has spent decades showing the reef to visitors but, having handed most of the day-to-day operations to his team, he now prefers to spend his time planting and cultivating coral.

“It’s like looking after a bonsai,” he explains as we swim over mushroom corals, sea cucumbers and cabbage corals — so named for their curling branches. “You’re forever planning, pruning, managing, cleaning. It’s very meditative.” Peering into the clear depths, I spot a whitetip shark gracefully weaving its way between the coral beds as clownfish watch on from the safety of waving anemones. Neon-coloured parrotfish happily graze on plate coral, unfazed by the enormous Māori wrasse looming above, its distinctive blue cheek tattoo seemingly aglow.

There’s a persistent threat posed by rising ocean temperatures and acidification, which can cause distressed corals to expel the algae living inside them and cause them to turn bone-white, an event known as bleaching. It’s a problem that’s front and centre for Alan and other reef conservationists after the Great Barrier Reef’s most recent mass bleaching event earlier this year.

It’s a steep learning curve, but one I’ve wholeheartedly signed up for after joining Passions of Paradise’s Eco Reef Tour. While general snorkelling and diving trips are available from their sailing catamarans, the Eco Tour goes a step further and lets you pretend to be a marine biologist for a day, buddying up with a guide to collect valuable data about the sea and its wildlife as part of a citizen science project called Eye on the Reef. You can also browse through the coral gardens and learn about Passions of Paradise’s more proactive efforts to repair the reef.

Following a mass bleaching event in 2017, the Australian government partnered with the University of Technology Sydney and a handful of tourism operators to develop the Coral Nurture Program. It sees volunteers diving down to rescue living coral fragments from the seabed and attaching them to specially designed floating nurseries. When big enough, the fragments are replanted on the substrate to allow a new colony to bloom. In time, these corals will form part of the reef that provides crucial shelter for thousands of marine species who feed, reproduce and nurse their young here.

As part of the reef-wide Coral Nurture Program, Passions of Paradise planted its first nursery in August 2019, but the wholesale closure of Australia’s tourism industry during the pandemic sent the programme into hyperdrive. With no tourists, operators were given funding to restore the reef and there are now 19 nurseries at three different sites. Estimates vary, but Alan suggests 20,000 new corals will be planted at Hastings Reef before the end of the year, with most of them surviving after being transplanted.

The water fizzes around our party as we snorkel away from the boat, trailing in Alan’s wake as we head towards the next coral garden. I swim over wavy tufts of seagrass and branching antler coral coloured a striking shade of blue. Nearly 40 feet below, there are divers exploring the seabed, their air bubbles tickling my face as they burble skyward.

Eventually we find shallower waters at the reef’s edge where we locate the nurseries — suspended metal frames that look like alien cities floating in the deep. Alan is like a proud parent when we freedive down a few feet to take a closer look, excitable bubbles escaping from his mouth as he points out how much the coral has grown and snapping off diseased limbs before they can spread. “Now that the coral has taken hold, these nurseries have become a small ecosystem in their own right,” he says, as we surface between dives, referring to the small fish grazing on algae and phytoplankton around the nursery.

Returning to the boat, changing weather starts to whip the otherwise flat water into choppy waves. I ask Alan what the future of these gardens looks like in the face of climate change. The tone in his voice changes as he explains how resilient coral is and how it’s growing back from bleaching episodes faster than researchers had previously expected. At a time when negative environmental headlines dominate, Alan says it’s more important than ever to give people hope: “People need to come here and see there’s still something beautiful that’s worth protecting. I know these nurseries are not the panacea — but all I can do is look after my garden patch.”