JUSTIN GILLIGAN Photography

Face Masks washed onto the shores of remote Lord Howe Island whilst the island was in lockdown. The masks came from a cargo ship that lost 50 containers in rough seas south of Sydney while transiting from China to Melbourne. Lord Howe Island is a remote World Heritage listed island located 800 kilometres north-east of Sydney, the waters surrounding the island support the world’s southern-most tropical coral reef. Targeted beach clean-ups were undertaken by enthusiastic residents and debris collected from the island, and from beaches on Australia’s eastern coast, will form part of a maritime investigation. Regardless of the outcome, the full environmental impact of discarding a significant volume of waste into the open ocean will never be fully quantified.

The love between Judy and Ray Shick has withstood the test of time on Lord Howe Island. During 60 years of marriage, the two raised their three children, marking five generations on the small island 600 kilometres off the east coast of Australia. A year ago, when the couple learned that Ray, 92, had dementia, Judy, 80, had to choose between leaving the island or taking on the responsibility of Ray’s care. She did not hesitate to keep him home. “It’s just what many families do on an island with limited health care available for the aging population,” Judy said. She does the best she can to make life enjoyable for her husband, a former guide on Mount Gower, which rises from the foothills behind their home. Today, Judy provides a daily regimented routine and structure for Ray. “We made this commitment in sickness and in health,” Judy said. “And now is the time for the sickness, after such a fulfilling life”. This story was developed during the first online version of the 72nd Missouri Photo Workshop in 2020.

Sydney’s sun-spangled waters are central to the city’s national and international reputation. But just how much life lies submerged, hidden away from the above-water pressures of Australia’s biggest city and its ever-sprawling human population beneath iconic landmarks, beaches and headlands? Sydney’s marine environment is exposed to most of the threats faced globally by coastal cities, including habitat loss, foreshore development, pollution, stormwater run-off and introduced pests. Despite this, there is a wild world thriving in these meandering waterways and coastal strip, with some plant and animal inhabitants not only coping with the shortcomings, but also finding their own strongholds.

As an impenetrable swampland, South Florida was one of the final frontiers for modern development in the Unites States. As such, it had an incredibly productive natural environment that supported a profusion of wildlife. In more recent times, a rapidly increasing human population has turned the region into an urban jungle, but it seems that its marine inhabitants are finding ways to survive, often with the help of local researchers and conservationists. This story was developed with support from the Save Our Seas Foundation’s Marine Conservation Photography Grant.

Scientists on an expedition to the far northern Great Barrier Reef witness the annual mass coral spawning spectacle and look for ways to help this ecosystem under pressure. Each year after a late spring or early summer full moon, a spectacular synchronised coral spawning occurs on the Reef. The Reef’s size contributes to its greatness, and from above resembles a thriving patchwork of healthy individual reefs. Yet scientists now estimate that this marine system, has experienced a 50 per cent loss in living coral cover following unprecedented back-to-back mass coral bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, with further bleaching in 2019. GBR Legacy is a not-for-profit social enterprise that brings together scientists, educators, communicators and the general public to engage in reef research. During an expedition in 2017 they identified a site in the worst-affected region that appears to have withstood the worst of the bleaching. The corals at this site are now considered to be resilient ‘super stock’, able to withstand severe heat. I joined GBR Legacy to journey back to the site with a research team from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and Dr John ‘Charlie’ Veron, known as the ‘Godfather of Coral’, who wanted to document hard coral species on a rare section of thriving reef. This football field–sized area of healthy coral has now been named the GBR Legacy Super Site – a beacon of hope in a warming sea.

It may be the cooler, little-known cousin of the Great Barrier Reef, but Australia’s Great Southern Reef (GSR) is just as important and just as much in need of our attention. Surfers paddle over it, anglers fish off it, almost 70 per cent of Australians live within 50km of it and it contributes $10 billion a year to the Australian economy. Yet few of us have heard of it – indeed, until recently, it didn’t even have a name. The GSR runs for along Australia’s southern coastline, from northern New South Wales to half way up Western Australia. Its northern cousin, the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), is made up of more than 2900 individual coral-dominated reefs, while the GSR is comprised of thousands of kelp-dominated rocky reefs. These range from intertidal rock pools to shallow reefs and deep-water environments dominated by sponge gardens. Just as warm water can cause coral bleaching on the GBR, increasing water temperatures are having a significant impact on the GSR. Scientists have identified that Australia’s temperate seas are warming two-to-four times more rapidly than the global average, largely due to the influence of the East Australian Current off the east coast and the Leeuwin Current off the west coast, both of which transport warm water southward.

The rich biodiversity of Moreton Bay, in Queensland, has seen it recognised as a Hope Spot, part of a series of global marine sites considered critical to the health of the world’s oceans. The waters of this subtropical east coast waterway are as close as 14 kilometres to the city’s CBD, and the coastal lands that fringe its westerly edge have been impacted by European settlement since the late 1800s. These days there is ever-growing pressure on the natural ecosystems here, with the bay – which extends about 125 kilometres, from Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast in the south, to Caloundra on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in the north – being on the doorstep of Australia’s fastest-growing urban strip.

There’s still much to discover about Australia's enigmatic rainforest-dwelling cassowary. The world’s second-heaviest bird remains shrouded in mystery. Living in the shadowy world of northern Queensland’s ancient rainforests, the southern cassowary still sometimes surprises scientists and wildlife carers with unusual and rarely documented behaviours. One of the most significant conservation challenges facd by the southern cassowary include habitat loss and fragmentation, the birds are also killed in significant numbers by vehicle strikes and dog attacks.