Great Barrier Reef Research Paper

Words: 682
Pages: 3

In order to protect the fragile ecosystem of the great barrier reef, the Australian government should force all farmers who have properties next to rivers to give up some of their farmland. The farmers should do this in order to plant a grove of trees to help reduce the amount of fertilizer runoff that reaches the ocean, as it causes many devastating and harmful impacts to underwater ecosystems. There are many harmful risks and consequences of this for life inside the Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of Queensland in northeast Australia, and contains an extraordinary abundance of marine life. It comprises over three thousand individual reef systems and coral cays. Approximately thirty species of dolphins, whales, and porpoises have been noted in the reef, including many rare species, such as the dwarf minke whale, and the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin. More than 1,500 fish species live on the reef, such as clownfish, red bass, and several species of coral trout. In summary, it supports a wide diversity of marine life and is an extremely popular attraction for tourists around the
…show more content…
being to take over underwater ecosystems. Usually, nitrogen supply is short in coastal ecosystems, as it puts a limit on the creation of organic matter by phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are small plants at the bottom of the food chain. When a certain ecosystem has a slight increase in nitrogen, phytoplankton population numbers grow drastically, which has a result of an algal bloom, and eventually destroys the state of equilibrium between the environment and its resources. Bacteria that is oxygen consuming eat the plankton that die and sink slowly to the ocean floor. When there is a bigger amount of plankton sinking, the bacteria uses oxygen more quickly than the water layers above it can replenish. In a result, this creates low oxygen conditions, as they are unsuitable for plant