AARON MORGAN is understandably excited about recent international recognition for his homeland. A Gunditjmara man from south-western Victoria, he was in Azerbaijan in July last year, when the state’s Lake Condah and the Tyrendarra fish traps were inscribed on the World Heritage List for their extraordinary cultural and historical values. It was confirmation that these were two of Australia’s most important Aboriginal sites.

A SINGLE GIANT SPIDER CRAB can be hard to see. It barely exceeds 15cm across, despite its common name, and its triangular upper shell is covered in spines, hairs and knobs that make it blend into an ocean fkoor background. It will even make itself more inconspicuous by placing living sponges, hydroids and algae onto its shell from the surrounding temperate reef environment where it lives. But when this species comes together en masse, in aggregations that can exceed 50,000 individuals, it’s difficult to miss.

THE CORAL SEA is serene today. Palm trees cast flickering shadows over a golden beach as a family makes its way across a tidal causeway towards a rocky island, fishing rods and buckets in hand. Behind them, on the mainland, hills clad in hoop pine forests roll towards the shore, their green expanse interspersed with occasional bare, jutting outcrops. On the island’s ocean side, sunlight glints off crystals embedded in black and red rocks.

as the giant Currowan fire roared over Mt Scanzi and down the hill to Tallowa Dam, on the western fringes of Kangaroo Valley, about 180km south-west of Sydney.

It’s been two decades since I last visited this celebrated dive site on Ribbon No. 3 Reef, east of Cooktown, on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). During that time this World Heritage-listed natural wonder has suffered a series of environmental threats, ranging from over-fishing to agricultural run-off. Many of these are now better managed. But the reef continues to face its biggest threat by far – climate change. Well beyond the realm of local management, this global phenomenon has caused four major coral bleaching episodes since 1988, killing huge swathes of coral and degrading the habitat associated with it (see AG 142). At the time of going to press another major bleaching was underway.