It was the silence of the sea that first rattled the teenage snorkeler, followed by a sense of horror as she saw the coral below had been drained of its kaleidoscopic color. This once-vibrant site on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — a site she’d previously likened to a busy capital city — had become a ghost town, the victim of yet another mass bleaching event.
On that day in 2020, Ava Shearer got out of the water and cried. Today, with the release of a United Nations climate report that paints a dire picture of the Great Barrier Reef’s future, the now-17-year-old marine science student and snorkeling guide wonders what will be left of the imperiled ecosystem by the time she finishes her degree at Australia’s James Cook University.
