The ABC reports Great Australian Bight the site of nation’s other great reef, where oil companies want to drill. I am suggesting that there is no such feature as the “Great Southern Reef” which is simply a GreenLeft invention to boost the campaign against oil exploration in the Great Australian Bight.
The ABC article starts [Anchored in calm blue waters off Wedge Island Nature Reserve in the Great Australian Bight]. Facts are Wedge island is firmly at the entrance to Spencer Gulf but I guess it is more glam for the ABC/Greenpeace anti-oil drilling campaign to claim they are in the Great Australian Bight.
IMHO Australia should permit petroleum exploration by well qualified participants pretty much anywhere in our economic zone under our normally stringent conditions.
If it wasn’t the “Great Southern Reef” I’m sure their concern would be for the critically endangered “crimson vacuole sea slug”?
An ideal spot for a coral reef is the Great Australian Bite (once bitten twice sh…..).
NO BLEACHING.
Maybe a bit of frost bite or damage by the Roaring Forties, but no bleaching.
Is it as large as the Christies Beach horseshoe reef?
Warwick, you are “suggesting that there is no such feature as the ‘Great Southern Reef’ which is simply a GreenLeft invention to boost the campaign against oil exploration in the Great Australian Bight.”
Something tells me you are on to something. From the ABC story:
“Despite it’s [sic] great value to Australia, much of the reef system is completely unknown. ‘It’s extraordinary that we’re about to put this ecosystem at risk when we know so little about it,’ Mr Pelle says.
A few comments:
“Great value to Australia” – The story elaborates that “The southern reef is estimated to generate $10 billion each year for the economy”, giving no source. Since the reef appears to be a few corals in shallow water around Kangaroo Island that 90% of Aussies have never heard of, I have some doubts that it is generating $10 billion a year, which would be 10% of the Gross State Product of South Australia. In fact, $10 million a year might be on the high side.
“Ecosystem at risk” backed by handwringing about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 – The story passes over in silence the fact that the spill was a rare event, in an almost enclosed ocean area, and that the effects still vanished in a couple of years. Also that the Gulf of Mexico has supported thousands of oil wells for decades and still has a tourist industry hundreds of times larger than South Australia’s.
“when we know so little about it” – But no matter what he finds out, you can bet it won’t change his mind about no drilling.
Also, cop this one: “In 2016, the Great Barrier Reef was dominating headlines as warm waters bleached and killed corals there. But at the same time, entire kelp forests on the Great Southern Reef were killed and scientists said they were gone forever.”
Some people will believe anything!
What I am saying is that all around the southern Australia shoreline and offshore zone where there is a rocky substrate then marine plant and animal life will adhere to those rocks and all manner of life will adhere sometimes to other marine life and or shelter in around the plant life.
Unless these rocky formations form a shallow zone that could be struck by ships then few would term it a reef.
If you examined a zone offshore say up to 12 miles most of the area would be muddy or sandy – only a small proportion would be rocky.
The “Great Southern Reef” concept is a beatup to glorify the normal and get more support for their anti-Petroleum exploration campaign.