The Great Barrier Reef is worth $42.4 billion, according to a new Deloitte Access Economics report that is for the first time calculating the full economic, social, and iconic brand value of UNESCO World Heritage sites.
The total comes after an extensive six-month study of the reef that drew on research from dozens of economic and scientific sources, as well as a survey of 1,500 people from 10 countries, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation-commissioned report said the Great Barrier Reef had an economic value of $4.88 billion on the Australian economy in 2015-16 and $2.9 billion in Queensland, wrote the Morning Herald.
Jobs at the Great Barrier Reef total 39,000 directly, with 64,000 jobs linked to it nationally, the Deloitte study said. That surpasses other top Australian employers, such as the National Australian Bank, which creates 34,000 jobs directly, Telstra, which has 33,000 employees and Qantas at 26,000, per the Morning Herald.
The world's largest living structure, the Great Barrier Reef covers more than 1,200 miles of islands and submerged reefs, according to National Geographic. Many corals thrive in the Great Coral Reef along with a sweep of parrotfish, surgeonfish, barracuda, and sharks.
CNN wrote that the reef is home to more than 1,700 species of fish and underwater creatures living throughout the roughly 3,000 sub-reefs. The reef contains 14 different ecosystems as well.
The Great Barrier Reef, though, has been damaged by massive bleaching events, wrote CNN.
Researchers told National Public Radio in April that the latest damage to the reef was caused by increasing water temperatures due to global warming.
"It takes at least a decade for a full recovery of even the fastest growing corals, so mass bleaching events 12 months apart offers zero prospect of recovery for reefs that were damaged in 2016," James Kerry, a senior research officer at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Queensland, Australia, told NPR.
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