The Great Barrier Reef is special because a) it's the largest marine system or reef
system anywhere on the planet, it's one of the most diverse ecosystems anywhere on the
planet and it's also one of the most accessible.
It attracts nearly two million a year at the moment and that number is increasing year
on year.
It's a really humbling experience when you first snorkel or dive on the Great Barrier
Reef.
The complexity, the diversity, the abundance of life is really quite breathtaking when
you see it and it still has that effect.
I can go to the same spots and still have that same experience today.
I get such a kick out of watching people going in the water and "Wow," and the lights up
off their faces and the little kids when they get close to a turtle or a manta ray, it's
so exciting.
It's worth more than gold in my mind.
Currently the reef contributes over $5.5 billion directly out of tourism but in the wider community
economic benefits that could flow on, it's been estimated $15-25 billion.
There's over 730 tourism operators and they employ over 64,000 full time people and the
wider reef employs about 69,000.
Coral can't live out of the water for more than a couple of hours.
Tourism is an amazingly important asset for the Great Barrier Reef.
I came here as a visitor and I fell in love with the reef.
I had never seen the reef before.
I'd never seen so much diversity of fish life, of coral, of bird life.
The excitement to me was amazing and I had this burning desire to want to enjoy it, to
share it and protect it.
We love guests to come out here, to see it, to fall in love with it and then they will
go away and protect it.
And you just go in carefully.
Just like the islands of old, we've evolved and learned.
We don't use little plastic water bottles.
We only have recyclable water bottles.
We turn glass back into sand.
We fly all of our recyclable rubbish off in the airplanes every day.
We use airplanes that have got the best fuel burn per passenger seat mile to minimise that
environmental impact.
We've reduced our fuel burn from 550 litres of diesel a day to around 100 litres a day
or about 50,000 litres a year.
So it's a 75% reduction.
That's why Lady Elliot is so special because we're right on the edge of the shelf and the
ocean� Tourism is almost a $6 billion a year industry
to the Great Barrier Reef.
So it's a very financially important business, but more importantly it's an environmentally
important business.
We're doing a good job.
The reef has turned the corner.
Great, positive outcomes are occurring and we're seeing more and more examples of that,
but we can't rest on our laurels.
We have to keep the pressure on for finding new ways, better ways to manage the park.
Eye on the Reef is a monitoring program where tourism operators collect data on key species
which we then feed into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Authority
then get the big picture.
We're out on the reef every day, so we're able to see change as it's happening.
We can then alert the authorities and actually have them come up and have a closer look at
something that's going on whether it be the onset of some coral bleaching or Crown-of-thorn
starfish appearing.
We're finding more and more that our guests are interested in contributing to the understanding
of the Great Barrier Reef.
They really want to know that their visit to the reef isn't having a negative impact.
It's amazing.
We often have people that are very nervous, they're very scared of snorkelling, they're
not great swimmers, so, and are reluctant to get in.
We persevere with those people and we get them in a life jacket, give them a noodle.
Once we actually get them in the water we really struggle to get them back out again
at the end of the day.
It's an incredibly unique environment that everybody should get to see at least once
in their life.