Fish Disappearance 'Worrying' For Reef Future

August 25, 2009

Release from: Murray Cornish
ABC News

Marine scientists believe the failure of gobies to repopulate damaged sections of the Great Barrier Reef may be a warning for the future.

Gobies are small reef fish with a very short life span that scientists are using as an indicator of a reef's health.

Professor David Bellwood from James Cook University says gobies vanished from a section of bleached coral off Orpheus Island in 1998 and despite the coral returning, the fish are still missing.

He says their failure to repopulate the coral is disturbing.

Professor Bellwood says that may be an indicator that fish will not return to damaged reefs as fast as first thought.

"These gobies only live for a few weeks - you'd expect them to be turning over very, very fast and they become like an indicator of how the future might be," he said.

"What's happening is they're not bouncing back, they're not coming back as fast as we'd expect.

"The reef may never be the same ever again - it's going to be different, we may have a reef but it's not going to be like the one we remember and it's more variable and more unpredictable than we thought."