A reef encounter

Robyn Williams -

Is the Great Barrier Reef doomed ? Some scientists say so. There are just too many assaults at once: extreme heat, overfishing, run-off and now acid. The reef has often been buffeted and recovered, but all this at the same time?

Some chaps (bankers and fishers, in my recent experience) think it's all fine. They've seen the seas teeming with fish and the corals looked lush on their last holidays. There were Nemos everywhere. As for acidification caused by dissolved carbon dioxide, they've found a scientific paper (one!) saying it may all be exaggerated. So that's OK, then ?

James Woodford decided to see for himself – the hard way. He joined the scientific pros for nearly two years, got his diving tickets and then nearly lost his life. It is a high level of commitment from a science journalist to whom I can only genuflect. Woodford has already written excellent, emotional books on hairy nosed wombats, Wollemi pines and dirt, and so I expected a judicious and lively story – and that is what we have in this book.

My only criticism is Woodford's willingness to malign himself. He almost rivals Richard Aedy (Life Matters, ABC Radio National) and Stephen Fry (all programs on ABC TV) in self-flagellation. He is forever expecting to drown, drop the apparatus, crash the boat, forget the drill or lose the compass and the only correction to an image of him as Mr Pooter on his knees is of the real Woodford on Lizard Island, formidably athletic and with abs like Beckham.

It is probably this fitness that saved his life. Two-thirds through the book, while supposedly resting at his ecologically sound home on the south coast, he falls off the roof, cracks his skull and suffers brain damage that removes his memory and makes both the quest and a book seem unlikely. His fight back through despair and lassitude to good health and those first attempts to dare to scuba once more, risking the “chicken dance" and possible oblivion, are enthralling.

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Photo: Gary Cranitch, Queensland Museum

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