Many Thanks to Ian Frazer for sharing his review of Hot Water — Inside the battle to save the Great Barrier Reef (2024) written by Dr. Paul Hardisty with the NQCC community. Enjoy the teaser for a very important book!

Book Review, In Hot Water — Inside the battle to save the Great Barrier Reef

Paul Hardisty found the Great Barrier Reef literally in hot water in 2017, when he arrived in Townsville as the new CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

Previously head of the CSIRO’s Land and Water Business Unit in Perth, his brief was rejuvenating Australia’s nearly 50 years-old institute of marine science, headquartered at Cape Ferguson, 50km south-east of Townsville.

His recently published book, In Hot Water — Inside the battle to save the Great Barrier Reef sketches his eventful five-and-a-half years in charge, culminating in his retirement in June 2023.

In this time, he served under 11 Federal Ministers and saw the bleaching events of 2016, 2017 and 2022 offset by three coolish, consecutive La Nina years as the world’s leaders struggled to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.

The marine heatwaves in the summers of 2016 and `17 bleached up to half of the reef’s hard coral cover, ravaging tropical species in the northern and central sections.

In 2018, AIMS convinced the Federal Government to fund a $100 million, five-year breeding trial of heat- tolerant coral species to sustain the reef. This was its share of a $443 million reef-protection package controversially distributed via a Brisbane-based charity — the Great Barrier Reef Foundation — without the scrutiny of a tendering process. The backlash delayed release of funds for nearly a year, damaging not only the then Coalition government but the cause of reef protection in general, Hardisty writes.

In early 2019, he and his family took shelter in a high-and-dry Townsville motel during a week’s torrential rain. The AIMS headquarters was cut off for 11 days by what was called a one-in-a-thousand-year event, yielding more than a metre of rain — “a shudder-inducing illustration of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change.”

Summing up the positives of his time at AIMS, he lists Australia’s adoption of binding climate laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions and seeing climate-change deniers getting “less and less traction.”

His book is part memoir and part rallying call: he writes, “at its core this is a story of conflict, of battles between those who seek to exploit the reef and those who want to protect it.”

It’s a thoughtful, hopeful read. Hardisty, an environmental engineer and novelist, believes it’s not too late to save the reef, “maybe looking a little different than the best of it does today, but it will still be a marvel worth travelling to see, worth dreaming about, worth being proud of.” His final chapter lists many ideas for individual and collective action to curb greenhouse gas-driven climate change.

He leaves readers with a quote from Ernest Hemingway, in For Whom The Bell Tolls: “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for” — tempered by novelist H G Wells’ warning: “Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

-- Ian Frazer