The Great Barrier Reef Literature & Language Research Paper

Running head: GREAT BARRIER REEF1
Great Barrier Reef
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Great Barrier Reef
Few world sites are as diverse and extensive as Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Covering approximately 348,000 km², extending 2,000 km² along Queensland's coast, a natural habitat for some 2,500 individual reefs of varying sizes and shapes, and spanning vast shallow inshore areas and oceanic waters over 2,000 meters deep – GBR was inscribe a World Heritage Site in 1981 (“Great Barrier Reef,” n.d.). The diversity and interconnectivity of species and habitats – including, only by way of few examples, 1,500 fish species, around 4,000 coral species, 4,000 mollusk species, around 240 bird species as well as a wide range of sponges, anemones, marine worms, crustaceans and many more species some of which are still unknown (“Great Barrier Reef”) – make GBR world's most complex and mature natural ecosystem. From above, GBR offers an unmatched expansive view of reefs, islands, and coral cays which are contrasted by vast mangrove forests in Hinchinbrook Channel, and rugged vegetated mountains and lush rainforest gullies periodically cloud-covered on Hinchinbrook Island. Moreover, GBR offers an invaluable record, historical, biological and physical of geological and geomorphological processes occurring over extended periods and, as such, explains current varied seascapes and landscapes. This unmatched natural diversity has placed special emphasis on efforts to protect GBR against a wide range of risks, natural and man-made, by many stakeholders including, most primarily, Commonwealth and State governments, commercial and recreational industries, research institutions and universities and, of course, Traditional Owners (discussed shortly). Given current state of affairs, GBR is protected by an arsenal of laws and regulations including, for example, Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), Zoning Plan, Marine Parks Act 2004 (Qld), Plans of
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Management, Special Management Areas, Agreements with Traditional Owners and permits, and Traditional Use of Marine Resou...