Diving beneath the ocean, Russell Hosp swam toward the limestone bed of the Great Barrier Reef, where he reattached bits of blue staghorn coral. With tourists gone, he was filling the void with this small act of conservation, which took his mind off the uncertain future on land.
"It was a bit surreal,” Hosp, a reef guide, said of spending hours at sea unaccompanied by the usual enthusiastic visitors. Aboard the quiet catamaran, he said, he realized just how much the coronavirus "had changed the world.”
The pandemic has fast-forwarded a looming reckoning for the tropical city of Cairns, the main gateway to the reef and the base for Hosp and many others whose livelihoods depend on it.
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