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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/apr/26/people-cant-imagine-something-on-that-scale-dying-anohni-on-mourning-the-great-barrier-reef>
"Anohni Hegarty is about to go to the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. “I
feel like I’m going to Auschwitz,” she says nervously. “On the one hand, I’m so
excited to go because the landscape is so beautiful, and I know there’s going
to be so much that’s gorgeous. And yet, I’m also scared.”
In a week, the British-born, New York-based avant garde singer of Anohni and
the Johnsons is flying to Lizard Island, a paradise of powdery sands on the
reef, 1,600km north-west of Brisbane. Its luxury villas and bluest of blue
waters are a stark contrast to the grim nature of Anohni’s assignment:
documenting the current state of the world’s biggest coral reef.
Reefs are hubs of biodiversity, supporting about a third of all marine species
and 1 billion people, and crucial to the Earth as both a carbon sink and a home
to algae, which produce at least half of the planet’s oxygen. The Amazon
rainforest, which produces about 20% of our oxygen, is often described as the
Earth’s lungs; being the size of Italy or Texas, you could call the Great
Barrier Reef the left lung and the Amazon the right. But the gigantic reef is
not well: it has been hit by six mass coral bleaching events in the past nine
years, an alarming trend driven by record marine heatwaves. If coral reefs
disappear, scientists warn there will be a domino effect as other ecosystems
follow – a step down the path towards mass extinction.
Anohni has been thinking about what she calls “ceremonies fit for purpose”, for
a loss of this magnitude. When a sudden catastrophe happens, like a terror
attack or natural disaster, humanity has worked out ways to process grief and
anger en masse: funerals, memorials, protest, activism. But what do we do in
the face of a slower death – like the worst global bleaching event on record,
which is happening right now and has hit more than 80% of the planet’s reefs?
“Where are the ceremonies fit for the purpose of naming and commemorating the
times that we’re living through?” she asks. “To see the Great Barrier Reef
fall, that’s 10,000 9/11s.”
“People can’t really imagine something on that scale dying,” she says."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
