As a worker on the Great Barrier Reef I'm ashamed to look my children in the eye | Justin Marshall

International film-makers are flocking to the reef to witness its degradation. The rest of the world is seeing what our government seems unwilling to admit

As a marine ecologist who has been working on the Great Barrier Reef for 30 years I am today still stunned, often tearful, and ashamed to look my children in the eye. The Great Barrier Reef is undergoing change that means it will never be the same again in my lifetime. It will take decades to regrow.

To put this in a global perspective, considering the reef as a whole, an area of the reef the size of Scotland has coral in it that is largely dead.