cover image A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef from Beginning to End

A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef from Beginning to End

J. E. N. Veron, . . Harvard/Belknap, $35 (289pp) ISBN 978-0-674-02679-7

Veron (Corals of the World ) once thought Australia's Great Barrier Reef would endure forever, but after witnessing the devastation inflicted on corals by elevated sea temperatures, he now knows this is false. In his impassioned book, the former chief scientist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science highlights reefs as indicators of climate change's effects on marine and other ecosystems. Time from a reef's perspective, rather than a human perspective, is one of the book's central themes. Past mass extinctions have occurred within the lengthy frames of geological time that allowed reefs to renew themselves. Today, as reefs succumb to mass bleaching (caused by high light and elevated temperatures) and ocean acidification, they are undergoing an extinction event in the significantly shorter frame of human planetary influence. Coral health affects all marine life. According to Veron's detailed analysis, corals will be incapable of relying on genetic adaptation to recover because the time frame for such evolutionary changes is too short. Complex scientific material serves Veron's straightforward message: climate change will soon reach the point of no return—possibly within a decade—and cause disaster for not only corals but many, if not all, marine food webs. Color illus. (Jan.)