Positioning

Since many states and countries have forced or encouraged their people to shelter-in-place during this pandemic, animals have been returning to city centers. It became so common, that the term “natural is healing” has become a meme that can be applied to anything from rubber ducks in the Thames River to Kylie Jenner being seen without a tan and makeup. I’m a big fan of these memes, but I know to a certain extent that they are true. Nature is healing because human impacts on the environment immensely decreased. A lack of boats allow have allowed animals to return to the Venice canals.

There was so much positive news, that I began to wonder if other places were seeing improvements as well. My first thought was Australia because they have such a diverse and unique animals and they had already suffered from the devastating wildfires in late 2019 and early 2020. In Australia’s case, human actions (including arson) was one of forces behind the wildfires, but human action was also responsible for saving some of the lucky animals. Australia’s nature will need a long time to recover on land, so I started researching about the coast.

A week into this course, reports came out that over half of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been bleached. These studies were probably done just before the pandemic, but as of right now, in the middle of pandemic, who knows if things have changed, let alone improved because of shelter-in-place. I was amazed, in the midst the many stories of “nature healing,” there was a new catastrophic report that the largest ecosystem on the planet is still dying.

Through this website, I hope you fall in-love with the Great Barrier Reef and the animals who call it home. To learn about this ecosystem and how we can protect it from future bleaching. Overall, I wish for this website to spark an interest in the Great Barrier Reef and to encourage you to start conversations about it.

Thank you for visiting my site, and happy reading.

The summer between my last year of elementary school and my first year of middle school, my mom and I visited our family friends in Australia. One of my oldest childhood friends and her family moved there a few years prior, and we were so excited to see them and visit Australia for the first time. To keep it short, all I can say is I fell in love with the nature of Australia. From giving a wombat a belly-rub in the desert to rescuing beached moon jellyfish on a little island off the coast, I loved every experience. Although these family friends have moved back to the states, my mom and I have always wanted to take the rest of my family back to Australia. My childhood friend and I learned to surf together when we were kids, so we always talked about going back and visiting the Great Barrier Reef. It was always wishful thinking, but in the back of my mind I knew that if we were ever going to visit the reef, it would have to be sooner rather than later.