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  The Age 27 Mar 06
Cyclone Larry saves reef from bleaching

Cyclone Larry has helped save the Great Barrier Reef from a major bleaching event by lowering the water temperatures, a marine specialist says.

Category five cyclone Larry roared westwards across the reef and onto north Queensland on Monday, leaving wrecked homes, crops and businesses in its wake. Also this week, Cyclone Wati developed in the Coral Sea and moved south-east as a category three storm, parallel to the coast, and whipping up huge seas.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland's (UQ) Centre for Marine Science said the two cyclones at the end of the wet season came in time to save the reef from bleaching after a one degree rise in sea surface temperatures above the normal summer maximum due to global warming.

"By creating waves, storms can cause the water column to mix and this can be a good thing, if in the case of a bleaching event, you've had warm water sitting over a coral reef area," he said.

Prof Hoegh-Guldberg said cyclones could also have a destructive impact if they sat over coral reefs and broke them up through wave action. But he said Larry was one of the fastest-moving cyclones, moving around 25kph and crossed the reef within hours, before destructive waves had time to develop.

Prof Hoegh-Guldberg said cyclones Larry and Wati together had helped avoid an event similar to that of 2002 when over 60 per cent of the reef was bleached and 10 per cent actually died.

"It's certainly eliminated any possibility that a final blast of summer might have caused further damage from coral bleaching, so for that, we are relieved," he said.
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