The Guardian

Australia’s natural wonder is in mortal danger. Bleaching caused by climate change has killed almost a quarter of its coral this year and many scientists believe it could be too late for the rest. Using exclusive photographs and new data, a Guardian special report investigates how the reef has been devastated – and what can be done to save it

It was the smell that really got to diver Richard Vevers. The smell of death on the reef.

Jon Brodie from James Cook University says to give the Great Barrier Reef even a fighting chance to survive, Australia needs to spend $1bn a year for the next 10 years to improve water quality. If we don’t do that now, he says, we might need to just give up on the reef. ‘Climate change is happening much more quickly and much more severely than most scientists predicted’

Terry Hughes from James Cook University in Queensland leads a taskforce measuring the condition of the Great Barrier Reef amid a global coral bleaching event that is ‘off the scale’. ‘The kind of bleaching we’re seeing now is an entirely modern phenomenon,’ he says. ‘We’re now in a very precarious position, where every El Niño that comes along, every five or six years, can potentially bleach the entire Great Barrier Reef’

Richard Vevers from the Ocean Agency had never experienced anything like the devastation he witnessed in May diving around the dead and dying coral reefs off Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. When his team emerged from the water, he says, ‘We realised we just stank – we stank of the smell of rotting animals.’ The reefs around the island have been ravaged by coral bleaching caused by climate change

Paul Crocombe from Adrenalin Dive in Townsville has been taking tourists to the Great Barrier Reef for more than 20 years. ‘We were really fortuntate this time with the coral bleaching that the majority of the mortality is a long way north of here,’ he says. With the reef in danger, he adds, accurate information is needed

Dead and dying coral at Lizard Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The once brilliant coral is blanketed by seaweed – a sign of extreme ecosystem meltdown. These exclusive photographs are from a series taken by not-for-profit the Ocean Agency as part of its work around the world documenting the longest coral bleaching event in history

Tiny bird flies 59,650 miles from its breeding grounds in Farne Islands in the UK to Antarctica and back again, clocking the longest ever migration recorded

A tiny bird from the Farne Islands off Northumberland has clocked up the longest migration ever recorded. The Arctic tern’s meandering journey to Antarctica and back saw it clock up 59,650 miles, more than twice the circumference of the planet.

The bird, which weighs just 100g, left its breeding grounds last July and flew down the west coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean and arrived in Antarctica in November. Its mammoth trek was recorded by a tiny device attached to its leg, weighing 0.7g - too light to affect its flight.

Europe’s influence on cleaning up the air Britons breathe is driven by the 2008 clean air directive but dates back much further

The UK government freely says that almost all its efforts to cut air pollution in recent years have been driven by EU legislation.

There is one reason why air pollution was a big issue in the London mayoral campaign and why the government is facing a legal challenge on its clean-up plans: the EU’s 2008 clean air directive.

Report recommends breeding the endangered species – which is the world’s smallest porpoise – in captivity, but some experts disagree

Mexican authorities should consider trapping some of the few remaining vaquita marina porpoises in order to attempt breeding the endangered species in captivity or semi-captivity, conservationists have recommended.

Related: Mexico urged to act and save world's smallest porpoise – the little sea cow

British Lung Foundation research finds those in poorer areas up to twice as affected as those in rich boroughs

People living in some of London’s most deprived areas have up to twice as much chance of dying from life-threatening lung conditions – from cancer to asthma – as those in the richest areas, new research has shown.

The research, by the British Lung Foundation charity, prompted the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to call for urgent measures to improve air quality and reduce pollution in the capital.

Vote Leave campaign head mocks partly-EU funded conservation project to revive numbers of little terns as ‘aphrodisiacs for birds’

For Brexit campaigners trawling for examples of apparently badly spent EU cash to hold up for public opprobrium, a project that involves leaving plaster models of birds on beaches may have seemed easy to mock.

Proposal for temporary licence extension for chemical used in weedkiller, to study concerns over cancer risks, fails to get sufficient majority in voting

EU nations have refused to back a limited extension of the pesticide glyphosate’s use, threatening withdrawal of Monsanto’s Roundup and other weedkillers from shelves if no decision is reached by the end of the month.

Contradictory findings on the carcinogenic risks of the chemical have thrust it into the centre of a dispute among EU and US politicians, regulators and researchers.

Companies say offshore wind will generate electricity as cheaply as fossil fuels within a decade if properly supported

A group of offshore wind companies have pledged that the technology will generate electricity as cheaply as fossil fuels in Europe within a decade – but only if policymakers across the EU take the steps needed to ensure such growth as a matter of urgency.

The pledge(pdf) and the challenge to ministers are designed to reposition offshore wind as having a strong future in the EU. The European commission has tended to emphasise gas as the priority source of energy security.

Two whale sharks destined for an ocean theme park in China were rescued after an 18-month investigation by Wildlife Conservation Society, covered by investigative photojournalist Paul Hilton. The operation, supported by Indonesia’s marine police, revealed where the protected species were being illegally caught and kept in sea pens by a major supplier of large marine megafauna to the international wildlife trade

Solving the problem of climate change will require daring actions

The climate system is a unifying ethical field that extends from the physical to the metaphysical and connects your actions to my well-being, and vice-versa, no matter how remote your life is from mine. The Golden Rule we have always treated as an abstract moral recommendation is now visibly playing out its logic in the physical world.

This period in history must be about useful innovations that rescue Earth systems from collapse and dignify human beings everywhere. We must dare to imagine, explore, and remake the limits of our experience, together.

Helen Pidd chooses her favourite bike clobber for 2016 after extensive testing in Mallorca ... and Manchester

Hurray! Summer is finally here and with it comes the best ever choice of women’s cycling gear. I’ve been testing a load of kit for the past few months in my native Manchester, plus sneaking off to Mallorca with my club to test the wicking properties of various jerseys and seeing which chamois offer best protection to my delicate bits. Here are my favourites:

University lecturer Doreen Collyer named as victim of second fatal shark attack in Western Australian waters within five days as authorities seek to kill animal

The second shark victim in West Australian waters within five days has been named as university lecturer Doreen Collyer, as authorities try to catch and shoot the animal believed responsible.

Collyer, a lecturer with the school of nursing and midwifery at Perth’s Edith Cowan University, was hailed as a much-loved and respected colleague, mentor and teacher.

Blencathra, Lake District In the whole time I tread its slopes and ridges this evening, I don’t see another soul

In a bright, breeze-ruffled Derwentwater, a shoal of swimmers moves towards the shore. Dozens of wet-suited arms arc rhythmically above the water like small sea serpents, churning the lake as they go. A gauzy light filters down through high streaks of cirrus and ranks of towering cumulus look like smoke thrown up over the fells from a giant cannon salvo.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 9 June 1916

June 8
“I came across six dead herons tied to a tree in the Goyt Valley,” writes a friend of mine. Some of them were quite young, evidently not having left the nest, and all had been killed about the same time. One reader of the “Manchester Guardian,” if he sees this note, will be especially annoyed; he has watched the birds here for years, even before he was certain that a small heronry had been established. Now some law-breaking keeper or water bailiff has apparently waited until the young birds were hatched to murder the whole brood; it was on the Cheshire side, and the heron is a protected bird in Cheshire. Much good protection seems to be! The sportsman, or the sportsman’s agents, appear to care nothing about the law, unless a sportsman of another type, usually called a poacher, is the offender.

The object of wild bird protection was to prove that wild birds were public or rather national property, but probably the excuse would be that it does not matter in war-time. Many of our finest sportsmen, however, have refused to preserve game during the war, but they, or at any rate some of them, observe the law and protect the scheduled birds.

Western Australia Department of Fisheries sets drum lines to catch and kill shark reported to be be between three and six metres long

A great white shark suspected of killing a 60-year-old diver in Perth’s north is being hunted.

The woman was diving with a 43-year-old man one kilometre offshore from Mindarie marina just before midday on Sunday when she was mauled.