Everyone told me to go before it was gone. That refrain has been running for twenty years now, which is both a testament to environmental urgency and, if you’re being cynical, a good marketing line for Queensland tourism.
I went anyway. I’m glad I did.
What it looks like now
The bleaching is real and visible. There are sections — particularly in shallower water — where you’re swimming over bone-white structures that were clearly once vivid coral. The absence of colour is striking in the way that a demolition site is striking: you can see the shape of what was there.
But.
There is still an extraordinary amount of life. I snorkelled a section near Fitzroy Island where the coral was dense and diverse, the fish were everywhere, and I spent two hours with my face in the water in a state of uncomplicated delight. Sea turtles. A reef shark that came within three metres. Parrotfish the size of my arm doing structural damage to the reef in the most charming way possible.
The complicated feeling
I came away with two things that I haven’t been able to reconcile.
One: this is genuinely at risk and the timeline is genuinely urgent. What I saw is better than some projections and worse than others, and there is no version of business-as-usual that ends well for it.
Two: it is still one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen. That doesn’t cancel the first thing. But it matters to say it.
Go if you can. Pay the marine stewardship fee. And look at it properly — not as an item on a list, but as a thing that exists and is worth your full attention.