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The Australian Government recently announced $7.4 million in funding to support Great Barrier Reef’s Lady Elliot Island and Pine Islet island restoration and revegetation projects.

The funding will help rebuild and maintain critical habitats on the islands to protect precious native species.

$1.9 million will help restore the native cay vegetation on Lady Elliot Island to build resilience against climate change.

$5.5 million will support the asbestos management plan on Pine Islet. This will enable the removal of asbestos and asbestos contaminated soil from the island.

Traditional Owners will also be supported to lead revegetation work.

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation notes that while reef islands provide safe places for species such as turtles, whales, manta rays and dolphins to rest, feed, shelter and breed, right now these islands and their marine life are facing a growing combination of threats, including climate change.

The Foundation is pioneering the Reef Islands Initiative, the largest reef habitat restoration project in the Southern Hemisphere.

Lady Elliot Island was the first island included in the initiative with eco champion and custodian of Lady Elliot Island, Peter Gash sharing “Lady Elliot is a coral cay and was covered for thousands of years by birds and the vegetation that mixes with the bird poo made the guano, because that is very high in compost and organic matter it’s fantastic for farming. The island was stripped bare while mining this guano and there the island sat unloved and unwanted for 100 years.

“When I first came to the island in the 1980s it was so barren that we called it ‘the rock’. I saw a place that had been stripped, so it’s exciting that we can prove that with collaboration and partnerships, a place that has had all this terrible treatment can be brought back to now being referred to as pristine.”

Dr. Kathy Townsend, who is leading the biodiversity research on the island, explained that so many of the Reef’s animals call Lady Elliot home because the island is so close to the continental shelf.

“Lady Elliot Island is a very special location; it attracts so many different species of fish and very large animals that you wouldn’t normally see around coral reefs. It has the largest aggregation of manta rays anywhere on the east coast of Australia.”

The pink reef manta ray, affectionately dubbed Inspector Clouseau after the protagonist of the Pink Panther franchise, was photographed by Kristian Laine who captured it swimming through the Great Barrier Reef near Lady Elliot Island. Laine didn’t realise at the time that he had seen the only known pink manta ray in the world and he told the website ScienceAlert that he had never heard of a pink manta when he first saw it, and initially thought his camera wasn’t working properly. The more than 3-metre-long manta ray elicited a similar reaction when it was first photographed by Ryan Jeffrey, a regular diver off Lady Elliot Island.

Scientists aren’t certain what gives Clouseau the pink hue on its underside. Project Manta, a research group at the University of Queensland, took a skin sample from the fish in 2016 and decided its colour wasn’t caused by diet or infection. The most likely explanation is that its pink hue is due to a genetic mutation in a protein that expresses the pigment melanin.

Image. Pink Manta Ray at Lady Elliot Island. Courtesy: Great Barrier Reef Foundation and Credit: Kristian Laine Photographer

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