It was Jenny Edmondson who convinced her husband, John, to buy Wavelength Reef Cruises in 2014. If they hadn’t taken on the Port Douglas-based tour operator, the two British-born marine biologists might never have tackled the vital work they do today.

The Edmondsons are key members of the Coral Nurture Program, which unites commercial operators and scientists to find solutions to reef threats. Wavelength is one of nine tourism collaborators in the Cairns and Port Douglas area and the Whitsundays.

Central to their work is replanting corals in popular but depleted reefs. Since the program’s inception in 2018, more than 100,000 ocean corals have been established. Jenny reckons she’s personally planted most of Wavelength’s 72,000 corals and John even invented an ingenious device called the Coralclip (a spring loaded clip that holds coral fragments to the reef and makes planting faster), which has revolutionised reef gardening around the world.

Additionally, Wavelength takes researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) out for testing and monitoring, and is involved with the federal government-funded Tourism Reef Protection Initiative, conducting surveys and predator removal. Involving tour operators in the scientific rescue effort makes excellent sense when, as Jenny says, “We are out there every day. We can keep an eye on stuff.”

Yuku Baja Muliku woman Larissa Hale brings a critical weapon to reef conservation – 60,000 years of Aboriginal knowledge and stewardship. Australia’s First Nations people know the reef’s vicissitudes better than anyone.

“Before the sea level rose, we were on those areas, living and thriving,” she says. “Ancient knowledge passed down from generation to generation is used to observe whether our Country, which includes mangroves, seagrasses and coastlines, is healthy.”

As managing director of the Queensland Indigenous Womens Ranger Network, Hale has spearheaded efforts to boost female First Nations ranger numbers from just a handful in 2008 – when she was the state’s sole female ranger coordinator – to 124 today.

Their jobs combine traditional knowledge with technology, using drones to monitor everything from corals and mangroves to land degradation. “Work that would have taken days can now be done in hours.”

The network’s pioneering efforts were recognised last year with a £1 million (about $1.9 million) Earthshot environment prize, which rewards “groundbreaking solutions to the world’s greatest challenges”.

Hale hopes the prize money can create a universal network of First Nations women rangers and inspire future generations. “When we realise that we are more than our roles as mother, daughter and sister – that we have a special role in taking care of our planet – that’s when great things happen.”

At the southernmost tip of the Great Barrier Reef, just north of Fraser Island (K’gari), Peter Gash and his wife, Julie, have transformed a former guano mine and goat farm into a model of mindful tourism.

In 2005 they signed the lease on the badly degraded Lady Elliot Island, famous for its dive sites and 1200-plus marine species, setting out to upgrade the “rundown, tired resort” and revive its habitat by planting native trees and removing invasive ones.

“Eighteen years on, it takes my breath away,” says Peter of the island’s transformation. “I look at it in disbelief at times. It would have been easy to say ‘it’s too hard’ but we were determined to find a way.”

Forty per cent of the 42-hectare coral cay has been fully revegetated, with more than three-quarters of the area transformed at least in part. Solar panels and batteries power most of the 44-room, 40-staff property and its fresh water comes from desalination. Despite hurdles along the way, Peter says they’re now “way in front” financially. “We need to challenge our peers and our colleagues to do the same sorts of things, to prove that we can do better.”

Marine biologist Dr Emma Camp has won a slew of international accolades from the likes of the United Nations and Time and National Geographic magazines, as well as prestigious awards including a Eureka Prize in Australia.

Her research into “super corals” – specifically mangrove corals that thrive in warmer waters – and what makes corals resilient to environmental forces has been a game changer for coral conservation. “We know corals can recover if given time between different stress events,” she says. “But these are becoming more frequent and we’re reducing the ability for the reef to naturally recover.”

Team leader of the UTS Future Reefs Program, which established the Coral Nurture Program and studies how corals might function and survive into the future, Camp is focusing on active interventions – from propagation and larval reseeding to genetic modifications and microbial manipulation. Though the work is still in the research and development phase, Camp is optimistic: “We have a duty to the next generation to not give up.”

A year after buying 10-suite Elysian Retreat in 2018, Laureth Rumble, along with her husband, Wayne, and brother Charlton Craggs, turned it beyond carbon neutral. “We wanted Elysian to be the first 100 per cent solar-powered luxury island resort on the Great Barrier Reef,” says Rumble, who sold Elysian last year but still operates the more humble, also beyond carbon neutral, Pumpkin Island, off the coast of Yeppoon.

“That way, we could show others it was possible. Builders, other tourism operators – they all said we couldn’t do it.” But they did and Elysian, located in the Whitsundays on Long Island (and now owned and operated by the Smyth family), proves that luxury and sublime relaxation can come with eco credentials. Guests enjoy comforts such as coffee machines, horizon pools, a small spa, air con, fine dining (excellent grilled squid; earthy mushroom risotto with chicken saltimbocca), plus a free-flowing selection of Australian beers and wines. And spirits produced in a zero-waste distillery from Rumble’s new project, Reef Distillers. Even the staff seem delighted to have found their vocations in paradise.

Now other island resorts, such as Lady Elliot and Orpheus, are following suit. Rumble puts her approach to change simply: “I’ve always been of the mindset that if everyone does a little bit then a lot gets done.”