ABSTRACT
Coral mining has had significant impacts on some parts of the Great Barrier Reef, yet the extent and severity of that activity have not been widely appreciated, despite the fact that public opposition to a proposal in 1967 to mine coral from Ellison Reef, near Innisfail, catalysed significant environmental protests in Australia and was one factor leading to the formation of the GBRMP (Carruthers, 1969, p47; Hopley, 1988, pp34–5; 1989, p20; Bowen and Bowen, 2002, p291). This chapter focuses on the impact of the coral mining industry, which operated in the Great Barrier Reef between at least 1900 and 1940. That industry has been previously neglected in histories of the ecosystem, but it was responsible for removing thousands of tons of coral from some reefs and pulverising it to produce agricultural and industrial lime, which in turn was used on sugar cane fields and in sugar refining mills in coastal Queensland. On some reefs, coral mining was both sustained and intensive, and significant destruction of those reefs must have occurred; coral mining has also affected the landscapes of some of the islands and cays in the region. Twelve locations at which coral mining occurred have been identified; some, such as Snapper Island reef (near Mossman) and Kings Reef (near Innisfail), sustained severe damage as a result of the use of gelignite or crowbars to remove coral.
