Seminar Series 2005

The Great Barrier Reef
Science in an Age of Management

Dr James Bowen
School of Environmental Science & Management, Southern Cross University, Australia

The GBR is the largest, and most intensively managed coral reef ecosystem on the planet. In 1975 an Act of the federal parliament created the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) to preserve the intrinsic character of the Reef 'in perpetuity'.

Previously, to create a data base of coral reef knowledge, in 1972 the federal parliament established the Australian Institute of Marine Science, (AIMS), based in the central part of the GBR at Townsville, which began operations in 1978, while the Queensland state government founded James Cook University also in Townsville, with a school of tropical marine science.
For the past thirty years, GBRMPA and AIMS have worked together, along with increasing levels of scientific input from James Cook University and the University of Queensland in Brisbane to preserve the World Heritage status of the GBR.

Throughout those three decades, however, coral reefs and their ecosystems have been under increasing pressure, from both anthropogenic and climatic developments, with the result that much of the science and management has been forced to be reactive to what, in the 1970s were unforseen events.

Today, in a climate of unprecedented, and accelerating degradation of coral reefs and their ecosystems worldwide, the science and management of the GBR is now considered 'world's best practice', and the GBR is in significantly better condition than any other reef system in the world.
This seminar will outline the main directions of world class scientific research coming from AIMS, and the world's best practice management procedures of GBRMPA, putting them into the context of the main degrading processes now troubling the world's coral reefs.