Mariah DeLosSantos, the Baylor University Sustainability in North Queensland student blogger, writes:
How could something so beautiful be in such danger?
Recently, I got the opportunity to dive in (literally) to the great living system that is the Great Barrier Reef. We got to snorkel and swim with the amazing fish around the reef and learn about how they all interconnect with each other.
What a lot of people don’t know is that the reef is dying. Due to human impact, such as carbon emissions, littering, and overall pollution leading to global warming, we have immensely impacted this extremely important ecosystem.
I also got to explore the Daintree Rainforest, the oldest rainforest in the world, when staying in Cape Tribulation! I got to witness the only area where rainforest meets the reef and learned the many benefits that the reef and rainforest gain from each other. They each provide protection and nutrients to help sustain each other and to grow. Without the rainforest, the reef would not survive, which is why we need to work harder on preserving this environment.
What is crazy is that people will not realize how much we are hurting the environment until there is physically not an environment to harm anymore. We need to act now in conserving our precious and fragile world in order to have a functioning ecosystem for our children.
