The impacts of coral mining - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 164

The impacts of coral mining
Introduction
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.
The coral mining industry was promoted by the Queensland Government
and was organised using a system of coral licences, but evidence of additional,
unlicensed coral mining was also found. Information about coral mining was
obtained from many records of the QDHM and the QEPA. In particular, material
was found in the files relating to the preservation of coral from exploitation, the
issue of coral licences and the Fish and Oyster Acts, 1914-1935 . However, the
records held at the QSA begin and end abruptly, with discontinuities between
series; archivists at the QSA suggested that other files may have been lost when
the Departmental offices in Brisbane were inundated during the Australia Day
floods of 27 January 1974. The sequence of coral licences suggests that more areas
may have been mined for coral than those specified in the surviving records.
Documentary evidence also suggests that unlicensed coral mining occurred in
some places, such as Kings Reef, before the system of coral licences was introduced.