New research provides some hope that all will not be lost for future coral reefs.

Overfishing, pollution and declining water quality have all taken their toll on the Great Barrier Reef, where coral cover has disappeared over the past 25 years.

15 January 2015
Above: Nineteenth century recreational fishers would regularly catch hundreds of fish off the coast of Queensland, often in just a few hours of fishing (Photo: T. Welsby, 1905)

Queensland scientists delving into newspaper archives have discovered that catch rates for Queensland’s pink snapper fishery have declined almost 90 per cent, since the nineteenth century.

17 November 2014