No reprieve expected for ‘cooking’ coral reefs

AUSTRALIA – Cyclone Debbie is not likely to give coral reefs off Cairns and Port Douglas any reprieve from coral bleaching, according to reef officials. And the weather bureau has not forecast any monsoonal activity on the horizon for the Far North.

Tour operators were praying the severe storm would cool local reefs from warm sea temperatures, which have so far resulted in several prime dive sites in the region suffering coral bleaching.

However, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority reef recovery director Dr David Wachenfeld said, due to Debbie’s slow-moving ferocity, there would be few benefits for local reefs from the system.

“I’m sure there will be places where the heat stress was getting worse and maybe the cyclone will, in some places, stop the bleaching over the next few days because it will cool down,” he said.

“But I think, for the most part, the places that were bleaching the worst are not going to be cooled down very much by the cyclone, which is a shame.”

He said the combination of the cyclone’s width, its slow-moving speed and intensity would lead to plenty of damage to the Reef.

“Obviously, it’s too early to be sure, but an educated assessment of the situation would be that the cyclone itself would have caused substantial damage to the reefs in its footprint,” he said.

Coral reef experts from GBRMPA and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, are still assessing the extent of the current mass bleaching event, the second to affect the Great Barrier Reef in two years.

The weather bureau has predicted that as Debbie dissipates over land in the coming days, the monsoon trough over Northern Australia will break down and the region will move into an inactive phase of the monsoon.

During this inactive or break period, shower and thunderstorm activity will become less frequent and more isolated over the northern tropics.

- mercury.com.au