Delicate beauty

As we walk , crabs make a run for the safety of their burrows in the white sand; it’s hard to imagine this place as a teeming rainforest 10,000 years hence.

MY PHONE BUZZES with a notification. It’s surprising that a squirt of data has managed to find its way to my device on a remote sand cay in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, but nonetheless I take a look to see who’s decided to pester me all the way out here. Ignoring disapproving looks from fellow guests, I see that Google is asking me to rate the Great Barrier Reef out of five like it’s my local pizzeria.

And therein lies the problem. All too often the Reef is approached as a commodity, a thing to be conserved or exploited, visited and rated, Instagrammed and ‘liked’. And it seems to be a constant presence in the media, whether in the shape of positive news or negative, an Attenborough documentary or a travel story, this one notwithstanding. But it doesn’t belong to us, its coral reefs formed millions of years before homo sapiens set foot on the grand stage, and what exactly is the Reef behind all the clamour?