The Rowley Shoals are on many a diver’s bucket list. The three coral atolls, hundreds of kilometres off the Western Australian coastline, are teeming with pristine coral gardens that for a long time, unlike many of the world’s reefs, had escaped the ravages of global heating.
“I’ve seen a fair bit of death and destruction, but Rowley Shoals was always the place that was still standing,” says Dr James Gilmour, a research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
