THE COMEBACK REFF
“CORAL HAS AN AMAZING SEX LIFE,” SAYS PROFESSOR PETER HARRISON,
DIRECTOR OF THE MARINE Ecology Research Centre at Southern Cross University in New South Wales. And he should know. A “coral sexpert,” Harrison has been studying coral and reefs for more than three decades, and it’s this topic that has brought him and a panel of other Great Barrier Reef authorities to the Heron Island Research Station off the coast of Queensland. They’re here to discuss the world’s largest living organism: how it has suffered, how parts are now thriving, how science and tourism are helping. And just how good it is at reproducing.
“Corals are very simple creatures, and most of the time they’re quite boring. But they’re exceptional animals, and many participate in mass spawning events, creating a … sea of sexual soup,” says Harrison. It’s a comment at once terrifying (no ocean swimmer wants to hear this as they take an accidental gulp of water), but at the same time globally significant—the discovery of large-scale coral spawning more than three decades ago recently culminated in pioneering reef-regeneration projects across the Philippines and Australia.
Rewind to the 1980s, when Harrison and fellow environmental scientists were cruising around Magnetic Island, a eucalyptus-clad drop of sand just off the coast of Townsville in North Queensland. The researchers noticed an unusual pinkish slick covering the surface of the sea:
