Sunny outlook: big solar farms given tick by neighbours
The US study, published in an international science journal on Tuesday, also found more than two in every five people surveyed felt positive about the renewable energy projects located near them.
Australian experts say the findings mimic the experience of those living near solar farms in regional areas, although they have called for greater education and transparency to ensure continuing community acceptance.
The research comes as the number of renewable energy projects ramps up in Australia, with 1.2 gigawatts of solar capacity added in 2024 in 14 large-scale projects, according to the Clean Energy Council.
The American study, published in Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy, surveyed 979 residents across 39 states living within five kilometres of a large-scale solar farm.
It found most residents felt positive (43 per cent) or neutral (42 per cent) about the solar project in their neighbourhood, while only 15 per cent felt negatively about it.
Asked whether they would approve of more solar projects being built in their area, 82 per cent expressed support or felt neutral, and 18 per cent said they would be opposed.
The size of solar projects had the greatest impact on residents' opinions, study author and University of Michigan associate professor Sarah Mills said, but the positive message from locals was clear.
"Just as has been documented for wind energy, we found that the NIMBY – not in my backyard – explanation for opposition to solar was overly simplistic and unhelpful in explaining neighbours' sentiments," Dr Mills said.
The study found some residents living near solar farms were poorly informed about them, she said, and recommended developers engage further with local communities.
The findings are similar to those from a Farmers from Climate Action study in 2024 that found 73 per cent of people in renewable energy zones supported wind and solar projects.
Australians were widely supportive of renewable energy as the recent federal election proved, RE-Alliance national director Andrew Bray said, and that approval extended to people in regional areas directly affected by solar projects.
"These are the sort of numbers we see supporting renewable technologies both in abstract and when you go to regional areas where these technologies are being built," he told AAP.
"Often the headlines you see around these things are not always telling the full stories."
Greater support and engagement should be provided to those living in renewable energy zones to keep them informed, Mr Bray said, and the federal government should consider establishing local energy hubs to help them access accurate information.
"The engagement has not been uniformly up to scratch," he said.
Australia developers established 21 renewable energy projects in Australia in 2024 according to the Clean Energy Council, including 14 large-scale solar developments and six wind projects.
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2 days ago
- The Advertiser
Australia's other great coral reef is choking. And nobody's watching
Nicole Ryan could see the damage from the boat. Floating above the usually vibrant waters of Rowley Shoals, 300 kilometres west of Broome, the coral beneath was unnaturally pale - a visible warning before she even entered the water. Once she dived in, the scale of the destruction became heartbreakingly clear. Much had already died. The coral that still had colour was likely living on borrowed time. "I'm just laughing because I'm trying not to cry," said Ms Ryan, an ecologist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), who coordinates a group of researchers and agencies monitoring bleaching of Western Australia's reefs. "It's an awful thing to see because that place is just beautiful - it's this beacon of pristine coral reef." The prolonged marine heatwave behind the devastation lasted, off and on, for nine months - triggering a mass bleaching event across the state. From the rarely visited Rowley Shoals to the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo reef, almost no area has been spared. "It's actually warmer than what is normal for the warmest time of the year," Ms Ryan said. "I think this is quite the largest footprint of heat stress and bleaching that we've ever seen." She described it as the worst coral die-off she'd seen. "A lot of the structure was still there, so it's pretty eerie. It's just there's no life to it." The same marine heatwave that struck WA in 2024 affected nearly 40 million square kilometres of ocean globally. It began off the state's coast in August and persisted until May the following year. The intensity wasn't just unusual - it was historic. It triggered a mass coral bleaching event that has devastated one of the world's most pristine fringing reefs and affected all of WA's unique coral colonies. "What's been more telling is just the accumulation and the resulting heat stress that we've seen," Ms Ryan said. "It's actually warmer than what is normal for the warmest time of the year." Many of WA's coral systems - including those that had previously escaped bleaching - are now struggling thanks to unprecedented thermal stress. "For many of these reefs, which is actually quite a frightening thing to witness, it's the worst of it we've seen for reefs that have typically escaped bleaching in the past," she said. Along Ningaloo reef, where normal water temperatures can nudge 30 degrees in hotter months, almost no area was left untouched. Aerial surveys conducted through much of 2025 revealed bleaching across its full 260-kilometre span - from the southern sections near Coral Bay to the northern reaches around Exmouth. "I think this is quite the largest footprint of heat stress and bleaching that we've ever seen," Ms Ryan said. Coral bleaching is a sadly familiar phenomenon to most Australians but has, until now, been associated with the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland's coast. The world's largest living structure experienced its fifth mass bleaching event in eight years during the 2023-24 summer and, in late July, narrowly missed being placed on the global list of in-danger World Heritage sites. Even tourists aboard glass-bottom boat tours have been able to spot the pale, ghostlike patches below - a visual marker of coral under stress. Coral appears "bleached" under stress because it expels the algae that give it colour - and a food source - leaving it white. When ocean temperatures rise, what's left behind is the white skeleton - vulnerable and starving. Mass coral bleaching is a recent phenomenon thanks to climate change. No records of large-scale bleaching exist before the 1980s and scientists say the ocean temperature is rising thanks to a heating climate. While corals exist happily in relatively warm seas, any rises between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius above the normal summer maximum for more than a few weeks at a time can cause heat stress. Longtime Coral Bay marine guide and snorkelling operator Frazer McGregor knew something was wrong when videos of manta rays appeared on social media - filmed not in Ningaloo's usual turquoise waters, but more than 1000 kilometres south off Perth. With a span of up to five metres "wing" tip to tip, these gentle gymnasts of the ocean are at home in the tropics and sub-tropics but had likely been pushed into cooler waters by rising sea temperatures. "They are super inquisitive and you can see them looking at you," he said as he skippered his winter tourist-laden boat through shallow turquoise waters in search of whales, dolphins, turtles and sharks. "You can almost get a feeling that their brains work over time to work out what we are." But climate change and heat are not the only threats to Ningaloo, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year to fish, swim with whale sharks, and dive and snorkel in startlingly clear waters alongside 200 species of coral and 500 different types of fish. Mr McGregor says, lately, it's become harder to find the large marine animals - and to have meaningful encounters with them. Boating traffic, people - and their desire to get the perfect Instagram picture - were all taking a toll. "It is more difficult to get and have good interactions with big animals and that's because they're staying away because of more people, more boats," he said. "Don't get me wrong: I am part of that problem as well as everybody else because I'm taking however many people out every day." But successful conservation efforts to help bring humpback whales from the brink of extinction showed regulation could have a big impact, he said. "If we do ease up the pressure, we can help things recover," Mr McGregor said. Right now, some key fish populations are in decline. "That's a combination of recreational fishing and climate change," he said. "It stands to reason that more fishing pressure's gonna take more fish out, and we've seen decreases in certain species of fish." But in the 25 years since Mr McGregor stopped at remote Coral Bay on a trip around Australia and decided to stay, much of the unique wonder of the reef remains relatively unscathed. "It's such a resilient and healthy reef that you may not notice those changes yet, and it may be that they become a catastrophic change when and if they happen," he said. "But, in general, I'm still taking people to places and showing them things that are the same as they were when I got here." Tourists willing and able to cross WA's vast deserts or the Indian Ocean to reach Ningaloo can still marvel as dugongs graze the sea grass, rising for breath every five minutes or so above the surface. They can see humpback whale spouts dotting the horizon and dolphins playing, swim with manta rays, and glide over loggerhead turtles taking lazy paddles across the sea floor. But those invested in the reef's future agree monitoring change is not enough. As politicians squabble over the net zero emissions policy far away in Canberra, finding solutions is one of the main priorities for philanthropic bodies like the Minderoo Foundation, WA mining billionaire Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's charity. Minderoo opened a state-of-the-art lab in Exmouth at the gateway to Ningaloo in 2021 to support research on the reef given its remote location. The lab has had recent, initial success in breeding heat-resistant coral at Ningaloo on the back of similar work on the Great Barrier Reef. "What we were able to do is ... apply the lessons that we had developed on the Great Barrier Reef, bring them over to Ningaloo with a few tweaks, and we were able to increase the heat tolerance of baby corals by over two times," lab research lead Kate Quigley said. Corals were key to the reef's health because they were ecosystem builders. "Without corals, we don't get many other different organisms that we are interested in saving and preserving and using," Dr Quigley said. "If we can figure out how to make corals more resilient to future temperatures, that will help the rest of the ecosystem." But locally-focused solutions needed to be coupled with action on climate change. "As exciting as this work is, especially around the breeding of heat-tolerant corals, it must come in conjunction with strong emissions control," she said. "We need to start bringing down emissions for these kind of conservation actions to work in the long term. "This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card." Nicole Ryan could see the damage from the boat. Floating above the usually vibrant waters of Rowley Shoals, 300 kilometres west of Broome, the coral beneath was unnaturally pale - a visible warning before she even entered the water. Once she dived in, the scale of the destruction became heartbreakingly clear. Much had already died. The coral that still had colour was likely living on borrowed time. "I'm just laughing because I'm trying not to cry," said Ms Ryan, an ecologist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), who coordinates a group of researchers and agencies monitoring bleaching of Western Australia's reefs. "It's an awful thing to see because that place is just beautiful - it's this beacon of pristine coral reef." The prolonged marine heatwave behind the devastation lasted, off and on, for nine months - triggering a mass bleaching event across the state. From the rarely visited Rowley Shoals to the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo reef, almost no area has been spared. "It's actually warmer than what is normal for the warmest time of the year," Ms Ryan said. "I think this is quite the largest footprint of heat stress and bleaching that we've ever seen." She described it as the worst coral die-off she'd seen. "A lot of the structure was still there, so it's pretty eerie. It's just there's no life to it." The same marine heatwave that struck WA in 2024 affected nearly 40 million square kilometres of ocean globally. It began off the state's coast in August and persisted until May the following year. The intensity wasn't just unusual - it was historic. It triggered a mass coral bleaching event that has devastated one of the world's most pristine fringing reefs and affected all of WA's unique coral colonies. "What's been more telling is just the accumulation and the resulting heat stress that we've seen," Ms Ryan said. "It's actually warmer than what is normal for the warmest time of the year." Many of WA's coral systems - including those that had previously escaped bleaching - are now struggling thanks to unprecedented thermal stress. "For many of these reefs, which is actually quite a frightening thing to witness, it's the worst of it we've seen for reefs that have typically escaped bleaching in the past," she said. Along Ningaloo reef, where normal water temperatures can nudge 30 degrees in hotter months, almost no area was left untouched. Aerial surveys conducted through much of 2025 revealed bleaching across its full 260-kilometre span - from the southern sections near Coral Bay to the northern reaches around Exmouth. "I think this is quite the largest footprint of heat stress and bleaching that we've ever seen," Ms Ryan said. Coral bleaching is a sadly familiar phenomenon to most Australians but has, until now, been associated with the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland's coast. The world's largest living structure experienced its fifth mass bleaching event in eight years during the 2023-24 summer and, in late July, narrowly missed being placed on the global list of in-danger World Heritage sites. Even tourists aboard glass-bottom boat tours have been able to spot the pale, ghostlike patches below - a visual marker of coral under stress. Coral appears "bleached" under stress because it expels the algae that give it colour - and a food source - leaving it white. When ocean temperatures rise, what's left behind is the white skeleton - vulnerable and starving. Mass coral bleaching is a recent phenomenon thanks to climate change. No records of large-scale bleaching exist before the 1980s and scientists say the ocean temperature is rising thanks to a heating climate. While corals exist happily in relatively warm seas, any rises between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius above the normal summer maximum for more than a few weeks at a time can cause heat stress. Longtime Coral Bay marine guide and snorkelling operator Frazer McGregor knew something was wrong when videos of manta rays appeared on social media - filmed not in Ningaloo's usual turquoise waters, but more than 1000 kilometres south off Perth. With a span of up to five metres "wing" tip to tip, these gentle gymnasts of the ocean are at home in the tropics and sub-tropics but had likely been pushed into cooler waters by rising sea temperatures. "They are super inquisitive and you can see them looking at you," he said as he skippered his winter tourist-laden boat through shallow turquoise waters in search of whales, dolphins, turtles and sharks. "You can almost get a feeling that their brains work over time to work out what we are." But climate change and heat are not the only threats to Ningaloo, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year to fish, swim with whale sharks, and dive and snorkel in startlingly clear waters alongside 200 species of coral and 500 different types of fish. Mr McGregor says, lately, it's become harder to find the large marine animals - and to have meaningful encounters with them. Boating traffic, people - and their desire to get the perfect Instagram picture - were all taking a toll. "It is more difficult to get and have good interactions with big animals and that's because they're staying away because of more people, more boats," he said. "Don't get me wrong: I am part of that problem as well as everybody else because I'm taking however many people out every day." But successful conservation efforts to help bring humpback whales from the brink of extinction showed regulation could have a big impact, he said. "If we do ease up the pressure, we can help things recover," Mr McGregor said. Right now, some key fish populations are in decline. "That's a combination of recreational fishing and climate change," he said. "It stands to reason that more fishing pressure's gonna take more fish out, and we've seen decreases in certain species of fish." But in the 25 years since Mr McGregor stopped at remote Coral Bay on a trip around Australia and decided to stay, much of the unique wonder of the reef remains relatively unscathed. "It's such a resilient and healthy reef that you may not notice those changes yet, and it may be that they become a catastrophic change when and if they happen," he said. "But, in general, I'm still taking people to places and showing them things that are the same as they were when I got here." Tourists willing and able to cross WA's vast deserts or the Indian Ocean to reach Ningaloo can still marvel as dugongs graze the sea grass, rising for breath every five minutes or so above the surface. They can see humpback whale spouts dotting the horizon and dolphins playing, swim with manta rays, and glide over loggerhead turtles taking lazy paddles across the sea floor. But those invested in the reef's future agree monitoring change is not enough. As politicians squabble over the net zero emissions policy far away in Canberra, finding solutions is one of the main priorities for philanthropic bodies like the Minderoo Foundation, WA mining billionaire Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's charity. Minderoo opened a state-of-the-art lab in Exmouth at the gateway to Ningaloo in 2021 to support research on the reef given its remote location. The lab has had recent, initial success in breeding heat-resistant coral at Ningaloo on the back of similar work on the Great Barrier Reef. "What we were able to do is ... apply the lessons that we had developed on the Great Barrier Reef, bring them over to Ningaloo with a few tweaks, and we were able to increase the heat tolerance of baby corals by over two times," lab research lead Kate Quigley said. Corals were key to the reef's health because they were ecosystem builders. "Without corals, we don't get many other different organisms that we are interested in saving and preserving and using," Dr Quigley said. "If we can figure out how to make corals more resilient to future temperatures, that will help the rest of the ecosystem." But locally-focused solutions needed to be coupled with action on climate change. "As exciting as this work is, especially around the breeding of heat-tolerant corals, it must come in conjunction with strong emissions control," she said. "We need to start bringing down emissions for these kind of conservation actions to work in the long term. "This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card." Nicole Ryan could see the damage from the boat. Floating above the usually vibrant waters of Rowley Shoals, 300 kilometres west of Broome, the coral beneath was unnaturally pale - a visible warning before she even entered the water. Once she dived in, the scale of the destruction became heartbreakingly clear. Much had already died. The coral that still had colour was likely living on borrowed time. "I'm just laughing because I'm trying not to cry," said Ms Ryan, an ecologist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), who coordinates a group of researchers and agencies monitoring bleaching of Western Australia's reefs. "It's an awful thing to see because that place is just beautiful - it's this beacon of pristine coral reef." The prolonged marine heatwave behind the devastation lasted, off and on, for nine months - triggering a mass bleaching event across the state. From the rarely visited Rowley Shoals to the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo reef, almost no area has been spared. "It's actually warmer than what is normal for the warmest time of the year," Ms Ryan said. "I think this is quite the largest footprint of heat stress and bleaching that we've ever seen." She described it as the worst coral die-off she'd seen. "A lot of the structure was still there, so it's pretty eerie. It's just there's no life to it." The same marine heatwave that struck WA in 2024 affected nearly 40 million square kilometres of ocean globally. It began off the state's coast in August and persisted until May the following year. The intensity wasn't just unusual - it was historic. It triggered a mass coral bleaching event that has devastated one of the world's most pristine fringing reefs and affected all of WA's unique coral colonies. "What's been more telling is just the accumulation and the resulting heat stress that we've seen," Ms Ryan said. "It's actually warmer than what is normal for the warmest time of the year." Many of WA's coral systems - including those that had previously escaped bleaching - are now struggling thanks to unprecedented thermal stress. "For many of these reefs, which is actually quite a frightening thing to witness, it's the worst of it we've seen for reefs that have typically escaped bleaching in the past," she said. Along Ningaloo reef, where normal water temperatures can nudge 30 degrees in hotter months, almost no area was left untouched. Aerial surveys conducted through much of 2025 revealed bleaching across its full 260-kilometre span - from the southern sections near Coral Bay to the northern reaches around Exmouth. "I think this is quite the largest footprint of heat stress and bleaching that we've ever seen," Ms Ryan said. Coral bleaching is a sadly familiar phenomenon to most Australians but has, until now, been associated with the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland's coast. The world's largest living structure experienced its fifth mass bleaching event in eight years during the 2023-24 summer and, in late July, narrowly missed being placed on the global list of in-danger World Heritage sites. Even tourists aboard glass-bottom boat tours have been able to spot the pale, ghostlike patches below - a visual marker of coral under stress. Coral appears "bleached" under stress because it expels the algae that give it colour - and a food source - leaving it white. When ocean temperatures rise, what's left behind is the white skeleton - vulnerable and starving. Mass coral bleaching is a recent phenomenon thanks to climate change. No records of large-scale bleaching exist before the 1980s and scientists say the ocean temperature is rising thanks to a heating climate. While corals exist happily in relatively warm seas, any rises between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius above the normal summer maximum for more than a few weeks at a time can cause heat stress. Longtime Coral Bay marine guide and snorkelling operator Frazer McGregor knew something was wrong when videos of manta rays appeared on social media - filmed not in Ningaloo's usual turquoise waters, but more than 1000 kilometres south off Perth. With a span of up to five metres "wing" tip to tip, these gentle gymnasts of the ocean are at home in the tropics and sub-tropics but had likely been pushed into cooler waters by rising sea temperatures. "They are super inquisitive and you can see them looking at you," he said as he skippered his winter tourist-laden boat through shallow turquoise waters in search of whales, dolphins, turtles and sharks. "You can almost get a feeling that their brains work over time to work out what we are." But climate change and heat are not the only threats to Ningaloo, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year to fish, swim with whale sharks, and dive and snorkel in startlingly clear waters alongside 200 species of coral and 500 different types of fish. Mr McGregor says, lately, it's become harder to find the large marine animals - and to have meaningful encounters with them. Boating traffic, people - and their desire to get the perfect Instagram picture - were all taking a toll. "It is more difficult to get and have good interactions with big animals and that's because they're staying away because of more people, more boats," he said. "Don't get me wrong: I am part of that problem as well as everybody else because I'm taking however many people out every day." But successful conservation efforts to help bring humpback whales from the brink of extinction showed regulation could have a big impact, he said. "If we do ease up the pressure, we can help things recover," Mr McGregor said. Right now, some key fish populations are in decline. "That's a combination of recreational fishing and climate change," he said. "It stands to reason that more fishing pressure's gonna take more fish out, and we've seen decreases in certain species of fish." But in the 25 years since Mr McGregor stopped at remote Coral Bay on a trip around Australia and decided to stay, much of the unique wonder of the reef remains relatively unscathed. "It's such a resilient and healthy reef that you may not notice those changes yet, and it may be that they become a catastrophic change when and if they happen," he said. "But, in general, I'm still taking people to places and showing them things that are the same as they were when I got here." Tourists willing and able to cross WA's vast deserts or the Indian Ocean to reach Ningaloo can still marvel as dugongs graze the sea grass, rising for breath every five minutes or so above the surface. They can see humpback whale spouts dotting the horizon and dolphins playing, swim with manta rays, and glide over loggerhead turtles taking lazy paddles across the sea floor. But those invested in the reef's future agree monitoring change is not enough. As politicians squabble over the net zero emissions policy far away in Canberra, finding solutions is one of the main priorities for philanthropic bodies like the Minderoo Foundation, WA mining billionaire Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's charity. Minderoo opened a state-of-the-art lab in Exmouth at the gateway to Ningaloo in 2021 to support research on the reef given its remote location. The lab has had recent, initial success in breeding heat-resistant coral at Ningaloo on the back of similar work on the Great Barrier Reef. "What we were able to do is ... apply the lessons that we had developed on the Great Barrier Reef, bring them over to Ningaloo with a few tweaks, and we were able to increase the heat tolerance of baby corals by over two times," lab research lead Kate Quigley said. Corals were key to the reef's health because they were ecosystem builders. "Without corals, we don't get many other different organisms that we are interested in saving and preserving and using," Dr Quigley said. "If we can figure out how to make corals more resilient to future temperatures, that will help the rest of the ecosystem." But locally-focused solutions needed to be coupled with action on climate change. "As exciting as this work is, especially around the breeding of heat-tolerant corals, it must come in conjunction with strong emissions control," she said. "We need to start bringing down emissions for these kind of conservation actions to work in the long term. "This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card." Nicole Ryan could see the damage from the boat. Floating above the usually vibrant waters of Rowley Shoals, 300 kilometres west of Broome, the coral beneath was unnaturally pale - a visible warning before she even entered the water. Once she dived in, the scale of the destruction became heartbreakingly clear. Much had already died. The coral that still had colour was likely living on borrowed time. "I'm just laughing because I'm trying not to cry," said Ms Ryan, an ecologist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), who coordinates a group of researchers and agencies monitoring bleaching of Western Australia's reefs. "It's an awful thing to see because that place is just beautiful - it's this beacon of pristine coral reef." The prolonged marine heatwave behind the devastation lasted, off and on, for nine months - triggering a mass bleaching event across the state. From the rarely visited Rowley Shoals to the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo reef, almost no area has been spared. "It's actually warmer than what is normal for the warmest time of the year," Ms Ryan said. "I think this is quite the largest footprint of heat stress and bleaching that we've ever seen." She described it as the worst coral die-off she'd seen. "A lot of the structure was still there, so it's pretty eerie. It's just there's no life to it." The same marine heatwave that struck WA in 2024 affected nearly 40 million square kilometres of ocean globally. It began off the state's coast in August and persisted until May the following year. The intensity wasn't just unusual - it was historic. It triggered a mass coral bleaching event that has devastated one of the world's most pristine fringing reefs and affected all of WA's unique coral colonies. "What's been more telling is just the accumulation and the resulting heat stress that we've seen," Ms Ryan said. "It's actually warmer than what is normal for the warmest time of the year." Many of WA's coral systems - including those that had previously escaped bleaching - are now struggling thanks to unprecedented thermal stress. "For many of these reefs, which is actually quite a frightening thing to witness, it's the worst of it we've seen for reefs that have typically escaped bleaching in the past," she said. Along Ningaloo reef, where normal water temperatures can nudge 30 degrees in hotter months, almost no area was left untouched. Aerial surveys conducted through much of 2025 revealed bleaching across its full 260-kilometre span - from the southern sections near Coral Bay to the northern reaches around Exmouth. "I think this is quite the largest footprint of heat stress and bleaching that we've ever seen," Ms Ryan said. Coral bleaching is a sadly familiar phenomenon to most Australians but has, until now, been associated with the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland's coast. The world's largest living structure experienced its fifth mass bleaching event in eight years during the 2023-24 summer and, in late July, narrowly missed being placed on the global list of in-danger World Heritage sites. Even tourists aboard glass-bottom boat tours have been able to spot the pale, ghostlike patches below - a visual marker of coral under stress. Coral appears "bleached" under stress because it expels the algae that give it colour - and a food source - leaving it white. When ocean temperatures rise, what's left behind is the white skeleton - vulnerable and starving. Mass coral bleaching is a recent phenomenon thanks to climate change. No records of large-scale bleaching exist before the 1980s and scientists say the ocean temperature is rising thanks to a heating climate. While corals exist happily in relatively warm seas, any rises between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius above the normal summer maximum for more than a few weeks at a time can cause heat stress. Longtime Coral Bay marine guide and snorkelling operator Frazer McGregor knew something was wrong when videos of manta rays appeared on social media - filmed not in Ningaloo's usual turquoise waters, but more than 1000 kilometres south off Perth. With a span of up to five metres "wing" tip to tip, these gentle gymnasts of the ocean are at home in the tropics and sub-tropics but had likely been pushed into cooler waters by rising sea temperatures. "They are super inquisitive and you can see them looking at you," he said as he skippered his winter tourist-laden boat through shallow turquoise waters in search of whales, dolphins, turtles and sharks. "You can almost get a feeling that their brains work over time to work out what we are." But climate change and heat are not the only threats to Ningaloo, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year to fish, swim with whale sharks, and dive and snorkel in startlingly clear waters alongside 200 species of coral and 500 different types of fish. Mr McGregor says, lately, it's become harder to find the large marine animals - and to have meaningful encounters with them. Boating traffic, people - and their desire to get the perfect Instagram picture - were all taking a toll. "It is more difficult to get and have good interactions with big animals and that's because they're staying away because of more people, more boats," he said. "Don't get me wrong: I am part of that problem as well as everybody else because I'm taking however many people out every day." But successful conservation efforts to help bring humpback whales from the brink of extinction showed regulation could have a big impact, he said. "If we do ease up the pressure, we can help things recover," Mr McGregor said. Right now, some key fish populations are in decline. "That's a combination of recreational fishing and climate change," he said. "It stands to reason that more fishing pressure's gonna take more fish out, and we've seen decreases in certain species of fish." But in the 25 years since Mr McGregor stopped at remote Coral Bay on a trip around Australia and decided to stay, much of the unique wonder of the reef remains relatively unscathed. "It's such a resilient and healthy reef that you may not notice those changes yet, and it may be that they become a catastrophic change when and if they happen," he said. "But, in general, I'm still taking people to places and showing them things that are the same as they were when I got here." Tourists willing and able to cross WA's vast deserts or the Indian Ocean to reach Ningaloo can still marvel as dugongs graze the sea grass, rising for breath every five minutes or so above the surface. They can see humpback whale spouts dotting the horizon and dolphins playing, swim with manta rays, and glide over loggerhead turtles taking lazy paddles across the sea floor. But those invested in the reef's future agree monitoring change is not enough. As politicians squabble over the net zero emissions policy far away in Canberra, finding solutions is one of the main priorities for philanthropic bodies like the Minderoo Foundation, WA mining billionaire Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's charity. Minderoo opened a state-of-the-art lab in Exmouth at the gateway to Ningaloo in 2021 to support research on the reef given its remote location. The lab has had recent, initial success in breeding heat-resistant coral at Ningaloo on the back of similar work on the Great Barrier Reef. "What we were able to do is ... apply the lessons that we had developed on the Great Barrier Reef, bring them over to Ningaloo with a few tweaks, and we were able to increase the heat tolerance of baby corals by over two times," lab research lead Kate Quigley said. Corals were key to the reef's health because they were ecosystem builders. "Without corals, we don't get many other different organisms that we are interested in saving and preserving and using," Dr Quigley said. "If we can figure out how to make corals more resilient to future temperatures, that will help the rest of the ecosystem." But locally-focused solutions needed to be coupled with action on climate change. "As exciting as this work is, especially around the breeding of heat-tolerant corals, it must come in conjunction with strong emissions control," she said. "We need to start bringing down emissions for these kind of conservation actions to work in the long term. "This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card."
7NEWS
3 days ago
- 7NEWS
UFO mystery: Glowing orbs over Queensland and NSW explained
Some mysterious and oddly shaped orbs in the sky have left Australians wondering if they had spotted a UFO. Three glowing white shapes were seen pulsating and expanding above the east coast around midnight on Wednesday. WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: East Coast UFO sighting. Residents from Queensland to northern NSW posted videos of the eerie sight on social media, with many speculating they had just caught a glimpse of something not of this world. 'Maybe three UFOs or a big star ship,' a Gold Coast witness told 7NEWS. 'The one my brother witnessed ... woke him up because it was so bright,' said another viewer. 'I think it might be something terrestrial from outer space,' one person guessed. 'Probably asteroids,' another suggested. 'It's a UFO. It has to be,' another viewer insisted. While the glowing orbs sparked talk of extraterrestrial visitors, Australian National University astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker offered a more down-to-earth explanation. He told The Morning Show the mysterious sight was actually a rocket plume — the exhaust released when parts of a rocket separate during launch. But the plume did not come from the first-ever Australian-made rocket that crashed 14 seconds after launching on Wednesday. 'This was from a Chinese launch, a Chinese Long March 8A, launched about 6.15pm AEST. So, it really matches up with the program,' Tucker said. According to Chinese media, the rocket lifted off from the Hainan commercial spaceport at 5.49pm on Wednesday AEST, carrying the sixth batch of low-orbit internet satellites into their planned orbits. The launch was reported as a complete success. Tucker said the rocket was launched to the southeast, passing over the ocean just off the coast of Queensland. 'Rockets have multiple stages, and when those parts of the rocket separate, they have little thrusters and gas that separate them. And that's kind of the exhaust coming out,' he explained. 'So, you can kind of picture there are two sides in the photo you're seeing now. 'That's the gas coming out the side as the rocket separates.' The unusual shape of the orbs is not unheard of. 'Sometimes we call these 'space jellyfish', believe it or not, because of the weird shape and tentacles,' he said. Although the lights may have seemed close, Tucker said they were likely hundreds of kilometres offshore and dozens of kilometres in the atmosphere. 'If you think about the rocket launch as it goes up, it actually takes quite a while to actually enter space. 'And so it's traveling for hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers before those parts are separate. 'They're also designed that when they separate they separate over the ocean so that if obviously anything comes down it lands in the ocean.' Social media erupts with strange sky activity from NSW to QLD. As for why the orbs appeared to be floating in place, he said it was simply the lingering exhaust hanging high in the atmosphere. 'It's kind of like peeling out in a car — the dust plume just hangs in the air behind it,' he said. 'The same thing happens with a rocket. The strange sight, he added, will eventually fade. 'The gas stays where the separation happens, and over time it just fades off into the atmosphere.'
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Would-be mothers to get ‘more transparency' on what egg-freezing may do
Fertility technology has leapt ahead since the first IVF birth in Australia in 1980, but one significant barrier for would-be mothers remains: age. One in 16 babies nationally is now born with the help of IVF, or 17,963 babies in 2022, but a key to likely success continues to be how old the woman is when her eggs are retrieved to create embryos, which some fertility specialists say is still not well enough understood. As the IVF industry undergoes heavy scrutiny and new regulation after devastating embryo bungles, claims of exaggerated success rates and expensive add-ons that are not clinically proven, scientists at one large provider have produced what they believe will give women 'more transparency' about egg freezing. The number of Australian women freezing their eggs, at a cost of $5000 to $10,000 a cycle, has increased dramatically in the past 10 years. Nearly 7000 women froze their eggs in 2022, up from 3642 in 2020, and multiple collection cycles are often recommended. There are more than 100,000 eggs frozen via 100 clinics nationally, but relatively few women have yet returned to use them, the primary reason being that women fall pregnant spontaneously, says longtime Monash University fertility researcher Karin Hammarberg. A large American study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 2022 found the pregnancy rate from frozen eggs is not as good as many women think, and some patients are overly optimistic. Loading Professor David Gardner, of Virtus Health and the University of Melbourne, has co-developed a calculation tool designed to provide evidence-based estimates of women's chance of having a baby with their thawed eggs, which is intended to help women decide if the process is for them, when to time it and how many cycles to have. The tool carries a disclaimer that women's medical profiles should be considered, but provides an overall estimate based on three data sets capturing final live birth rates from frozen eggs. Two of the studies are international and the third parcel of data is compiled from the known outcomes of 5180 thawed eggs in Australia – but not presented as a peer-reviewed study.
