Sustainable cruising and the Great Barrier Reef—World Cruising news

by David Schmidt, Sail-World Cruising Editor on 23 Oct 2015 I recently read an article on anchoring that reminded me of how important it is to drop hook in properly designated spots when cruising “delicate waters”, for example coral reefs. These slow-growing formations provide many important environmental services, such as protecting and buffering the mainland from approaching storms and beach-scouring waves, but as resilient as they are to some acts of nature, they are susceptible to impact from many other sources, some obvious, others less so.

Take, for example, the world’s most impressive reef system, the Great Barrier Reef. This world-class natural treasure is comprised of almost 3,000 reefs and 900 islands, all located in the Coral Sea, which is situated off of the Australian state of Queensland, where I was fortunate to live during a university study-abroad program during the late 1990s. In total, the Great Barrier Reef stretches over an area of some 344,400 square kilometers (133,000 square miles), and is visible from outer space.

During my Queensland stint, my family traveled Down Under to visit Oz for a few weeks and sprung me from “Uni” for a week of chartering in the glorious Whitsunday Islands. Not only was this a great chance to experience some world-class sailing in a hemisphere that was new to our crew of Yankees, but it was also a welcome relief from the constant deluges that were part and parcel of spending living in a tropical rainforest some 70 kilometers southwest of Cairns.

During this idyllic week, each day started the same, namely with a swim, a sail and the chance to experience life on the Great Barrier Reef.

To our eyes, the reef was virgin, untouched, but some of the locals that we met talked of its even more glorious days in the 1950s and 1960s, before the reef system started to lose vast swaths of its coral capital.

According to scientific studies, the Great Barrier Reef has lost roughly half of its coral species-and, vis-a-vis, large numbers of resident fauna species, since 1985, much of it a direct result of human-related activities (no shock there, sadly).

Thanks to my university course work in Environmental Studies, I was aware of the environmental impact that agriculture on Queensland’s Atherton Tableland, including agricultural runoff (fertilizers, pesticides and sediment) from (specifically) banana plantations, was having a serious impact on the health of the Great Barrier Reef, but other impacts-including climate change-were equally eye-opening.

Take, for example, coral bleaching, which happens as ambient ocean temperatures rise, killing-off temperature-dependent reef flora. In fact, just a few months before our 1998 visit, the Great Barrier Reef experienced one of three mass coral bleaching events (the others were in 2002 and 2006) that killed vast stretches of coral.

But it was dropping hook at different nightly anchorages that opened my eyes to the tragedy of the commons that was unfolding, and moreover, that some of the good actors (namely, sailors) were inadvertently playing the role of foil characters.

While some areas, such as Hayman Island to the north of Hamilton Island-the largest inhabited island among the 900 gleaming gems-had clearly designated anchoring areas (and, I’m told by my mates, they have now installed permanent moorings for visiting yachts to use), other areas were much more of a free-for-all. While we used our snorkeling gear to try and suss-out the sandy spots to drop hook, shy of 2015-era sonar systems and their rich graphical displays, these sandy spots weren’t always easy to pinpoint.

According to different online research resources, the Great Barrier Reef produces some $6.4 billion Australian dollars (more than $4.6 billion a year in U.S. Dollars) a year in tourism dollars alone, and employs some 64,000 people. But much more importantly, the environmental services that the islands and reefs provide are critical to sustaining life ashore in Queensland and other Australian states. These services run the gamut from storm buffering to wetland protection to maintaining healthy fishing stocks, and are critical to life on the lonely continent.

While land-based agriculture and other industries need to be held responsible for cleaning-up their practices to try and ameliorate runoff and reef eutrophication, visiting sailors must be incredibly careful to reduce their environmental footprint to mere body-weight impressions in the sand. This obviously includes proper garbage and black-water disposal, but the responsibilities extend from macro-scale efforts such as finding suitable (read: sustainable) holding rounds, to micro-scale efforts such as ensuring that your sunscreen doesn’t wash off and inadvertently cause localized reef pollution.

Fortunately, these responsibilities pale in comparison to the privilege of swimming, diving or snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, an ecosystem and environment that-in my humble opinion-stands alongside the Himalaya and the Amazon Rainforest as one of the greatest natural treasures that this planet has to share with its inhabitants.

Treat these places kindly, and with long-sighted love, and they can become models of sustainability; focus only on short-term gains and temporary convenience (read: absentmindedly dropping anchor), and the future doesn’t contain anywhere near as many colorful clown fish, angelfish, damselfish, gobies, parrotfish, or the blue-and-black surgeonfish.

May the four winds blow you safely home,