Great Barrier Reef
The dark violet entities scattered on the sea are coral reefs. The land on the west side is the northeastern coast of Australia, and the small island at the southerntip is called Dunk Island. The resort city of Cairns lies about 100km further to the north.
The Great Barrier Reef is the world's biggest coral reef extending from the southern sea over New Guinea to the east coast of Australia around latitude 24oS. It resides further off the coast as it gets away from the York Peninsula. The reef is 10 to 15km offshore in north increasing to 240km at most in the southernmost part. Many ships busily ply there it is surrounded by coral reefs and waves are calm, making for smooth sailing.
The Great Barrier Reef was first formed about 15,000 years ago at the time when the sea level started to rise as the result of global warming after the Ice Age. Coral is a sea animal lives in a warm clean sea, eating small algae from which it takes in carbon dioxide and produces rocks made of calcium carbonate. In this part of the sea, there are coral reefs containing several hundreds of billion tons of carbon dioxide. From the standpoint of protecting the earth from global warming alone, we do need coral reefs.
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