Ove Hoegh-Guldberg was just 10 years old when he first saw the Great Barrier Reef. That year, 1969, most young kids around the world were getting their inspiration from Nasa’s mission to put an astronaut on the moon. But for Hoegh-Guldberg, the fine grey dust of the lunar surface had nothing on the other world below the gentle Queensland waves.
He remembers the copperband butterfly fish and its fringing iridescent colours whose beauty “defied logic”, as well as the “incredible” epaulette shark that uses its fins to walk on the sea bed.
