Recent predictions suggest that coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef could be reduced to less than 10% within the next 90 years.
Dr Eric Wolanski of James Cook University believes that the state of the Barrier Reef between Lizard Island and Bowen has been declining since the European settlement of Australia.
However, rather than global warming causing this decline, Wolankski has suggested that right now, the problem is a land-use problem, which we can correct.
Declining coral cover
Using historic data relating to the coral cover on the reefs, Wolanski estimates that coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef has been declining at a rate of approximately 20% every 100 years.
The picture we're seeing is we had about 65 per cent coral cover 100 years ago, Dr Wolanski told the Townville Bulletin. We are now in the mid-40s. By 2050 we are in the mid-30s and in 2100 we are left with less than 10%.
Wolanski believes that mud and chemicals washed out from farms onto the reef are choking the corals, blocking out the sunlight. In February 2006, the reef around Dunk Island, on the Eastern coast of Australia, was covered in such mud for almost two weeks.
If you dive under the sea there you can see the shape of the old reef, but now it's all dead, reported Wolanski. He suggests that this reef provides an insight into what the Great Barrier Reef could look like in 90 years time.
Taking action
There is a chance though that the fate of the Great Barrier Reef could be changed, recovering about one-third of this loss, if the current threats posed by destructive farming practices were to be controlled.
The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report last year, however, suggesting that the Great Barrier Reef could be extinct within decades as a result of acidification and rising sea temperatures.
Dr Wolanski concedes that, if this is true, then any action taken would not make a difference, because we won't have anything left.