Late last spring, I was part of an expedition to Scott Reef, a magnificent coral atoll nearly 300 kilometres off the Kimberley coast. And while it was a privilege to be in such a remote and wonderful place, watching rare and endemic sea life drifting past, the moment I tipped from the boat in my mask and fins, I knew something was wrong.
The water was too hot. Not tropical warm, but uncomfortably hot.
Our first dive was over a coral garden at the crest of a sea mount. But I struggled to concentrate on what I was seeing, because of an uncanny, skin-crawling sensation that came over me at the surface. When I took a breath and got down past 8 metres, the unpleasantness receded a little, but on the way back up it overtook me like the shimmery, woozy feeling you get before you faint.
“Is it just me,” I asked marine ecologist Dr Ben Fitzpatrick as we climbed back into the dinghy, “or is this water super hot?”
The veteran marine scientist pointed to the boat’s sonar unit. The reading it gave was 35C.
Our next dive was in the idyllic lagoon near Sandy Islet. As outgoing tide drained the shallows, the water grew pearly, almost opaque, like what comes out of the hot tap at home. Where the current drove down into the deep drop-off, the thermocline was visible – you could see the hottest water colliding with the cooler layers. At the surface, it was 36C.
“Dear God,” I said. “It’s only November. Is this just a local anomaly?”
The way Ben dropped his mask at his feet and looked away to the horizon was not at all reassuring. I told myself the boat’s instruments were a little off kilter, imprecise at the very least.
But later that day, as the sun settled into the orange sea, Ben brought up the sea temperature satellite models on his laptop. The imagery was horrible.
“You know where all this hot water is headed, don’t you?”
I nodded. The Leeuwin current pushes south and drives tropical water inshore along the West Australian coast. This heatwave was headed for our shores.
The dread in that moment of recognition haunted me for the remainder of the trip.
In December, we heard the first reports of corals bleaching in the Kimberley. Farther south, in January, 30,000 fish died en masse on the Pilbara Coast.
Last week, Ningaloo reef began to experience widespread coral bleaching. Early reports had sea temperatures 4 degrees hotter than usual.
As Ningaloo’s many gifted photographers and videographers began to document the reef’s distress, the scale of this event began to sink in. Coming so hard on the heels of the bleaching episode of 2022, this is tough to contend with. For many of us who love the reef, or depend on it for our jobs, the shock hasn’t yet given way to grief. Some cling to the hope that things look worse than they are, and that coral death will be minimal. Those of us who’ve been studying and defending Ningaloo for decades are trapped between rage and sorrow. Because we know this was a foreseeable calamity. It could have been avoided.
This is what 30 years of denial and delay have brought us. This is what current government policy settings produce, and what they’ll continue to inflict on our coral reefs unless we turn back from the brink right now.
These marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more intense. Climate scientists predicted this, politicians and fossil fuel barrackers dismissed their warnings, but here it is.
Such is the cost of business as usual – more heat stress, more damage, more death, more anguish.
And this is not just an ocean problem. Winter temperatures in the north of WA were in the 40s last year. Over summer they’ve been in the high 40s for days on end, and the coastal town of Carnarvon, south of Ningaloo, hit 50C, which is terrifying.
These are not just unseasonable temperatures – they are unsafe, and they’re humanly unsustainable. We should not be expected to find them politically acceptable.
We are on track for 3C of heating. Which means all coral reefs will die and vast swathes of the planet will become uninhabitable.
The IPCC says that if we can restrict heating to 1.5C, some corals could survive, and fewer humans would perish or be forced to live in misery. But to do this we’d need to refrain from any more fossil fuel developments. That means putting humanity’s long-term wellbeing first. The science is clear on this – the morality should be too.
The problem is, of course, that a small cohort of people make enormous, often untaxed, profits from oil, gas and coal. These folks, and the political leaders who protect their commercial interests, all deny responsibility for climate breakdown, yet their role in delivering all this heat and suffering is clear and unequivocal.
These are the people who stand in the way of our safety.
So, with two significant elections ahead of us in WA, while we’re still absorbing the week’s bad news from Ningaloo, perhaps this a moment to take stock.
Having acknowledged our extinction crisis and the climate emergency, Anthony Albanese promised to introduce more effective nature laws. His government hasn’t delivered on that promise. A policy failure this monumental isn’t just politically embarrassing – in the real world of blood and fur and feathers, it’s calamitous. Because without positive action, precious things and places will die. That’s not tragic – it’s shameful.
Sad to say, part of that shame can be sheeted home to my home state of Western Australia. The last-minute intervention of our premier, Roger Cook, ensured the extinction of those new nature laws.
WA, of course, is the only Australian state without a 2030 emissions target – here, carbon pollution is increasing. So, no surprise that temperatures are already dangerous, fires and floods are intensifying, and homes and properties are becoming uninsurable.
Polling shows that most Western Australians want climate addressed properly as a matter of urgency. But the Cook government’s fealty to the fossil fuel industry, backed by local press barons, is almost tribal. Despite the science, they want to back the likes of Woodside to drill and pollute for another 50 years. That’s a death warrant for Australia’s corals.
After this week, our shock will turn to sorrow. But while we must own that grief, we should be sure to identify its sources and use that knowledge to bring about change. Elections aren’t our only opportunity to disrupt and destroy business at usual, but they’re a good place to begin.
Tim Winton is an Australian novelist. His new novel Juice is out now
