Rosaleen Love: Reefscape: Reflections on the Great Barrier Reef

(Allen and Unwin $32.50)

Review: Penelope Bieder*

Women are more buoyant than men - that was the first thing Rosaleen Love learned when she joined a scuba-diving course.

At 58, she could find many good reasons for not learning to dive, but she knew that if she was to get to grips with the object of a life-long fascination, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, she had to go under the water.

"Enjoy it while you can," said the scuba-shop assistant.

Only later did Love realise he meant, "Enjoy it while it's still here."

The Great Barrier Reef has existed in its present form for roughly 6000 years, which is only a moment in time, but its moment may be passing.

In 1998 a dramatic wave of coral bleaching spread all over the world, a direct consequence of the rise in sea-surface temperatures in tropical waters, the impact of global warming.

As Love puts it: "The heat stressed the single-celled organisms that live in coral tissues, give them their colour and provide them with energy, the zooxanthellae."

They deserted their coral hosts and bailed out into the ocean. Many corals from most species bleached to a dead white. Some have since recovered, others have died.

This book tells the story of a World Heritage area, important both for its natural beauty and its cultural value to Aboriginal people.

Astronauts see it from space; it is the largest structure in the world created by living things.

Love attempts to portray not just the reef itself but its meaning as it is encountered in danger, work, fun or the search for sustenance.

She profiles it from the points of view of mariners, pearlers, naturalists, film-makers, poets and hunters.

She even attempts to describe what it is like to be a fish.

Using a recently coined word, "fishness," she describes their form of three-dimensional, sideways perception. This is the only chapter of a very interesting book where the author is in danger of losing her species-specific viewpoint.

A sort of new-age speak slips in but quickly she realises that "understanding the nature of fishness may exceed the limitations of the human imagination, creativity and empathy." Whew!

(My only other small gripe is that I would have liked a better map than the one provided, which is hand-drawn and characterful, but does not show distances and so on.)

For naturalists, ocean-lovers and especially scuba divers, this is a thoughtful, well-written exploration, an invitation to celebrate the beauty of a place that is doomed, a place that has a million visitors annually.

There is more to conserving the reef than conserving the corals. The plants and the birds of the cays, the seagrass beds and mangrove communities, the diversity of life forms such as dugongs and turtles and manta rays are all threatened.

When Love describes the feeling of being surrounded by, or infused with, an enveloping, engaging tactility, in this case warm water and brilliant sights, she conveys the feeling of "losing oneself" that encapsulates something that is part of many people's experience of the Great Barrier Reef.

* Penelope Bieder is a freelance writer.