Professor John Pandolfi from the University of Queensland specialises in historical changes to reefs and has observed dramatic changes to Australian reefs firsthand. ‘I first dove on the Great Barrier Reef in 1987 and since then there’s been a lot of change in terms of coral cover, abundance of fish and sharks, and changes in water quality,’ he says.‘It’s a very different place than it used to be.’John says that until a few years ago he was primarily focused on local factors such as overfishing, pollution, and runoff from land due to land-use changes. ‘I used to personally think, ‘Oh, I know climate change is a global threat to reefs, but we have all these other impacts that are already substantially damaging the reefs.’ And it has been quite a change for me over the past few years to see all this damage being vastly compounded by the devastating impacts from climate change that’s getting worse and worse,’ he says. Professor John Pandolfi sampling corals at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef, years prior to the recent major bleaching events. | Photo by Ruth Reef Beyond the very visible damage to coral reefs, sea life across all marine species and marine ecosystems are also struggling to survive rising temperatures. ‘Basically, organisms can respond to climate change by moving or adapting – or the third choice is they die.’‘The number of species that are moving and shifting their ranges to escape the heat is absolutely astounding,’ says John.