people come to the Great Barrier Reef
and expect doomsday it has been
publicized that the Great Barrier Reef
is dead I assure you it's definitely not
dead however the Great Barrier Reef is
under threat there are so many animals
that are relying on us we need to do
something because if we lose all of this
it's gonna have a huge impact
my name is Johnny Gaskell and I'm a
marine biologist on daydream island we
got
LuAnn here they're young LuAnn oops
pushy I guess the first thing we do each
day is head into the living room check
the animals check corals check the water
quality once we've done that we invite
guests to come with us on educational
tours to inspire people to want to
protect the oceans through the
connections that they make with the
animals the Great Barrier Reef is the
largest living structure on the planet
to 2,300 kilometer stretch of coral reef
so all of the organisms that make up the
Great Barrier Reef colonies of animals
and these little polyps excrete calcium
carbonate and make these structures
underneath the soft tissue and that's
how you get your coral structure the
color in the coral is actually an algae
that lives inside the coral tissue and
that's where you get all the bright
vibrant colors it is very important to
note that although some parts of the
Great Barrier Reef are still thriving on
the other side there's a lot of parts of
the Great Barrier Reef that need help if
something's not done soon we may lose
these places in 2016 and 2017 there was
two mass bleaching events and cuz it was
consecutive it had a significant impact
on the Great Barrier Reef an estimated
one third of the Great Barrier Reef was
affected by this and we did lose a lot
of coral after the 2017 bleaching we
were hit with tropical cyclone Debbie
and that cyclone was a category four
that basically sat over the whitsundays
through
thirty hours so we did lose a number of
sites in the whitsundays - cycling
damage the day I jumped in at Lover's
Gove after the cyclone was about four
weeks after the cyclone I really didn't
want to get in because I kind of
expected what was there
it was stills the worst just having that
memory of this underwater city just with
corals everywhere fish everywhere it's
so harsh that one day you got in and you
didn't realize it was your last
so now I just want to do whatever I can
to help it get back to as close as what
it was possible there's two methods of
coral propagation that we're using at
the moment collect coral put them onto
nurseries that we've actually built
under the water in the Marine Park and
then give the corals time in these
nurseries to get to a suitable size
where we can then plant them back into
the damaged sites the other method that
we're trialing here at the moment is to
use coral raceways that are actually out
of the water these tubs use raw water
that cycles through them to basically
replenish whatever's in there so we
actually grab the corals from the wild
put them into the raceways leave them
there in the raw water as it cycles in a
controlled environment for four to five
months till they get to that size we
need and then I'll plant them back into
the wild into the sites where
and damage the advantage of using the
raceways is it's controlled it's right
there we have it in front of us and if
God forbid another cyclone comes along
at least then we have the coral
fragments ready to go inside these
raceways and the outlanding can be done
much faster so this is a coral Raceway
this one here I actually designed late
one night some crazy idea we're really
lucky that there Queensland an
Australian government actually funded
this project it's really good to get the
support of the government and without
them none of this would have actually
happened it's the first time this is
done in the region so hopefully in the
future other places do the same thing so
this is a pretty exciting moment we've
got the coral raceways up and running
ready to go and the very first coral is
about to go in and let's do it
oh the sit all right Carl
Wow
yeah eight months of planning and this
is it the korells in this will be one of
the species that we will be propagating
inside the race ways to then out plant
into the wild who have actually named
him an annex Steve the longer we leave
him in here and the longer he stays
healthy
the more we know that this system really
works first Carol have a look at it it
is thriving Kyrgyz doubled in size
already
you know what I actually haven't been in
here since the cycling this spot
after the corals have spent a bit of
time in the raceways this is potentially
one of the sites that we will aim to
restore so I'm gonna jump in now at the
camera see if the girls are gonna have a
happy heart
what I just saw down there was clear
cyclone damage it's there's not much
cover on any of the rock surfaces and a
coral rubble as far as you can see with
a little bit of assistance
hopefully this site can come back people
all over the world want to come and see
the Great Barrier Reef but there are
actually ways that people can come and
help out with the recovery of the reef
the citizen science effort is paramount
to this project we want people to come
to the region go to the sites that we've
recovered take photos send them to us
upload them and then hopefully over time
we can get a an indication of how its
recovered it's not too late for the
Great Barrier Reef if everybody does
their part then future generations will
get to experience all of this
you
