The Great Barrier is home to over 2.000 types of coral, fish, bird, reptile and mammal, thus it’s one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

The reef is in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland in Australia, this living barrier that we know it today is estimated to be around 8.000 years old.

The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms.

The Reef is bigger than United Kingdom, the Grand Barrier Reef can be explore by diving, railing, flight, getting underwater or being in a boat.

 

What weaken the Great Barrier Reef is Climate change, pollution, crown-of-thorns starfish and overfishing.

 

Climate change increase frequency of weather events, rising sea temperature for example : more intense cyclones that can destroy and weaken the reef structure, extreme rainfall that will send freshwater further out from the coast and on the Reef, the rises of sea temperature cause mass coral bleaching. The rises of the acidification in ocean cause coastal 

Climate change also increase the rises of sea temperature, the acidification in ocean and the rising of sea levels that cause mass coral bleaching, coastal erosion, and land inundation. 

 

Pollution is recognized as one of the most significant threats to the Great Barrier Reef, the poor quality of water increases sediment and nutriment entering coastal waters and increasing seawater temperature and the acidity of sea water. A specific type of pollution called “farm pollution” that causes the smother of corals and seagrass beds and denies them of sunlight. It also makes coral more vulnerable to bleaching.

 

Crowns-of-thorns-starfish are an important part of the ecosystem when they are alone they just tend to eat the faster growing corals which gives the slower species a chance to catch up but when they are grouped together the impact on coral reefs can be disastrous.

 

Overfishing cause species extinction and in the case of the Great Barrier Reef this also happened, currently in 360 species found there are 22 endangered.