According to the latest Australian Institute of Marine Science report, there is record coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef. Yet this is less than 30 percent at about half of the reefs surveyed. The relatively low percentage cover is because only the reef perimeter is surveyed by AIMS, which is the equivalent of reporting on the population of Sydney after skirting around the outer suburbs.

Such a method (skirting around the outer suburbs) would give no indication of population trends in more densely populated inner-city areas. And so the latest AIMS report gives no indication of coral cover at reef crests, which for all we know given the methodology underpinning this latest survey, may have collapsed entirely across the Great Barrier Reef.