If you have never put your head underwater it is hard to describe the feeling. The world goes quiet and blue, speckled with colours and creatures that one could only describe as magic. There is always a faint crackle-and-pop, and maybe a whale song if you’re lucky. Each dive inspires a connection with nature that you feel down to your bones.
As a dive instructor and marine social scientist, I’ve spent thousands of hours beneath Australia’s surface, and thousands more speaking with the people who live, work and play on the sea. But over the last seven years, I’ve watched both the dive sites that we love – and the conversations around them – change. I remember my first mass coral bleaching event, I’d never felt so helpless.
That feeling is shared across Australia’s dive community as we brace for another record-breaking summer of marine heatwaves. And as our oceans are signalling for help, the Federal Opposition has vowed to scrap net zero. An extraordinary step that would place marine ecosystems and the industries they support in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the Albanese Government is rewriting Australia’s most important environmental law. Whether climate change is recognised as a central environmental risk, or left as an optional footnote, will shape the future of every reef, kelp forest and coastal community in this country.
I write this because the decisions made in Canberra don’t stay there. They show up on dive boats and in conversations with visitors. A few years ago visitors began arriving at the Great Barrier Reef with questions we could no longer answer with a smile and a postcard. How do you inspire people to love a place that you know is hurting? How do you convince them we can make a difference when headlines say otherwise? I often wonder how many other professions are required to confront climate change so intimately, while being expected to sell tickets to it.
Today, we’ve released results of the nation’s first survey of divers’ experiences with climate change. The results confirm what many of us have felt for years: 91 per cent of divers across Australia have directly observed climate impacts underwater, from coral bleaching to shifting species, more unpredictable weather and warming seas.
The emotional toll is real. Almost all survey respondents described grief, anxiety and even guilt as they guide visitors through sites they know are not as they once were. There is a financial toll too. Half of the divers surveyed reported affected income, property or costs due to climate-related damage. For many small businesses in coastal Australia, one severe season can mean tough decisions about the future. This is not abstract climate modelling, this is lived experience.
To abandon net zero is to abandon us. Tourism, fisheries, aquaculture, hospitality, recreation, transport, they all rely on stable, functioning oceans. To walk away is to tell thousands of Australian small businesses and the people that depend on them, that their futures are expendable.
While the Federal Opposition’s decision to abandon net zero is deeply disappointing, they are not the government Australians voted in to lead the country through accelerating climate risk. The Albanese Government now has a chance to show real leadership, to modernise our most important environmental law so it considers climate pollution, the biggest threat to our ocean and the millions of Australians that depend on it. If policymakers could see what we see underwater, climate would be in the opening paragraph.
Every diver I know carries a quiet grief about the changes we are seeing. But we carry hope too, because we know how much there is to save. I see it in the passion of instructors who guide first-timers through previously damaged coral reefs, helping them understand both the fragility and the extraordinary possibility of recovery. I see it in the way underwater photographers seek out pockets of life that are thriving to show others how much magic still exists beneath the waves. I see it in the way tourism operators are investing in local conservation and Indigenous stewardship, determined to fight for our ocean’s future.
It takes courage to fight for something you love. What we need now is political leadership to match that courage. Australia’s oceans are telling us exactly what they need: bold climate policy, and a commitment to a safe future for the industries and communities that rely on them.
We can only do this together.
Divers for Climate is launching the Summer of Solidarity to turn findings into action, and respond to the growing sense of concern felt within the diving community.
Feature image credit: Alicia Chanavat