Garie Beach - Can someone tell me why the great barrier reef is relevant to a persons life and environment?

Can someone tell me why the great barrier reef is relevant to a persons life and environment?

If you have heard about the oil spill in the great barrier reef recently, how is the oil spill relevant to a persons life? Environment? I have to write a paper that is 750-1200 word essay and come up with an outline.

Public Comments

I don't know about human lives,but it is certainly detrimental to the marine life & the reef itself. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/asia/la-fg-australia-reef5-2010apr05,0,3324015.story?track=rss
I guess your best bet would be to focus on the many, many, many p*#sed off trawler operators at the moment. Especially as they're very highly regulated.... yet a Chinese boat can cruise through a "shortcut" completely undetected and cause more damage in a second than the lot of the fishermen combined. The tourism boat operators. The irreparable damage to a very precarious resource.
Environmentally there is a huge number of plants and animals affected, both directly and indirectly. For example, the humpback whales travel up this way to give birth and mate, if sharks didn't have other fish then they may go for the calves and fewer may come here... People wise, lose of fish stoke, bad water conditions and loss of tourism. The reef brings in millions of tourist dollars every year.