Getting Wet on the GBR …

… made a lightning fast visit to the Great Barrier Reef out from Cairns recently for The Australian.

Journalist Graham Lloyd and I were choppered out to Moore Reef … certainly one of my quickest (and shortest) visits to the Great Barrier Reef !

A twenty five minute helicopter flight … then straight into the water with camera, reef crew Katherine, reef ecologist Eric and journalist Graham … forty five minutes working in the lagoon, the flat and the wall of Moore Reef … then straight back on the chopper to Cairns.

The Australian published a couple of my images to accompany Graham’s story on page 3  (middle pic below) with a pointer from page 1.

In the top two images below Katherine is exploring the ‘wall’ area of Moore Reef which was smashed during Cyclone Yasi in 2011, impacted by Cyclone Ita in 2014 … and then extensively bleached during climate change related extreme temperature events in 2016 and 2017. Damage on the ‘wall’ section is still evident but it does appear that corals are making a comeback (and the fish numbers were astonishing.)

Even on the ‘flat’ area between the lagoon and the wall … where there has been extensive bleaching (which I documented back in May 2017 for @everydayclimatechange and News) … there is some coral regrowth.

Sadly, with more frequent extreme temperature events and cyclones almost a certainty as the planet warms, the World’s largest reef system still faces a distinctly uncertain future.

The reef trip also gave me a chance to use a nice new bit of kit … the Sealife 0.5X wide angle dome lens … on my Sealife DC2000 underwater camera (pic bottom below). The wide angle is perfect for my choice of underwater pics … making underwater ‘landscapes’ much more impressive. If you are interested in any underwater kit (including the excellent Sealife system) may I suggest contacting Tim Hochgrebe at Underwater Australasia for the best range and prices.

Images © Brian Cassey

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Great Bit of the Barrier Reef …

Over the decades I’ve been fortunate to visit many Great Barrier Reef dive sites working on reef stories for various publications … but this one spot – the Fish Bowl at the Sno Dive Site at Opal Reef out from Port Douglas visited whilst working for the Courier Mail just before Christmas …  is really something else !

Just before my visit the BBC selected this very reef spot and spent two weeks here filming a documentary and searching for the ultimate reef footage and ‘money shot’.

In this pic made on a Nikon D4s in a Ewa Marine housing, Heather Baird – a 23 year old dive master from the reef boat Calypso – is swimming amongst an amazing variety of corals.

Lets hope the threats of global warming, coral bleaching, ocean acidity, fertiliser runoff … and the crown of thorns star fish … do not impact this beautiful irreplaceable environment.

(September 2016 Update – I returned to the Sno Dive Site. It appears that the vivid colours of the coral in this image from December 2015 MAY have been due to the coral being ‘under stress’ from sustained high water temperature … as the bleaching process began. Certainly, on my return to Sno there were no corals showing such intense colouration.)

Image © Brian Cassey 2015

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