The Current: Manta Rays, Media Spin and the Art of Missing the Point

Misdirection and the environmental stories no one is telling

The Current - Your Saturday dispatch from the edge of the blue planet.

Whether you're reading this once the kids are out the door for football, the laundry is humming, or you’ve finally sunk into the sofa with your first real coffee of the day, this is your space for sharp, longform reflection. Each week, in The Current, I take a closer look at the headlines, research and rhetoric shaping our relationship with the sea. I’ll wrestle with greenwashing, expose the soft lies we tell ourselves, and shine a light into the murky waters where spin thrives and truth drowns. You will not find false comfort here. You will find anger, dark humour, disbelief and truth. Sometimes raw, but always honest, because the ocean is in crisis, and someone needs to say what that really means.

---

This week, Marine Business News reported what it framed as good news: new research has revealed that ocean warming may extend the stay of manta rays and zebra sharks along the New South Wales coastline. Tourists, divers and snorkellers could enjoy sightings of these majestic species for up to four months longer each year. According to the article, that is a commercial win for the region’s A$4.3 billion marine tourism industry.

Here is the problem: this is not a win. It is the sound of the system groaning under pressure.

Before we dive in

When I first read the article, I laughed. Not a happy laugh. More the kind you let out when the absurdity of something brushes right up against the apocalyptic. The kind of laugh you might hear at a funeral when the priest says, "At least the weather held."

We are watching generations of species pushed into unfamiliar timelines. Entire ecosystems are reprogramming themselves in real time, yet the headline takeaway is: Great news. More time to swim with manta rays.

This kind of public relations spin is so grotesquely obvious, so see-through, that it exposes itself. It becomes a laminated case study in how climate chaos is being gift wrapped for commercial use.

It gives people like you and me something to point to and say, This.

This is what greenwashing looks like in 2025.

Not denial. Not silence. Just complete rebranding.

I never want to criticise journalists for doing their jobs. They are often writing under pressure, within the editorial confines of the publications they work for. In this case, the article accurately reports on a scientific study titled Ocean Warming Projected to Increase Ecotourism Opportunities to Encounter Iconic Marine Megafauna of Southeastern Australia. The journalist was doing what was expected. The study itself focuses on ecotourism benefits. However, to me, and perhaps this is a privilege of being close to the subject, there is a deep cognitive dissonance at play.

As soon as I saw this Australian article, I did not think, brilliant, tourism in New South Wales is about to boom. I thought, the oceans are warming, the Great Barrier Reef is going to collapse, and no one is talking about it. That is the business story. That is the real headline. That is what we should be reacting to.

So yes, I am frustrated.

Of course I am.

I am also taking notes, because this is not just a tourism puff piece. It is the media handing us the rope and asking us, ever so kindly, to fashion a noose.

The bigger picture

Yes, New South Wales might enjoy a few extra weeks of manta rays. Yes, local tour operators might get a spike in bookings

…but this story ran in Marine Business News, not Sydney Wildlife Weekly.

If we are going to talk business, let’s really talk business.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef generates over A$6 billion a year and supports more than 60,000 jobs. It is the heavyweight of Australian marine tourism, and it is dying. Mass bleaching, biodiversity loss and collapsing coral structures are becoming regular features of life on the reef. If ocean warming continues at its current rate, the temporary bonus of a few photogenic rays on the central coast will be utterly eclipsed by the long term economic hit of ecosystem collapse.

This should not have been a story about seasonal photo opportunities. It should have been a red alert for one of the most valuable natural assets in the southern hemisphere.

If tourism is a business, then the collapse of the reef is a boardroom crisis. Yet we are cheering a sugar rush while the house is on fire.

While we are at it, who gets to decide which stories get published in the first place? Who is responsible for curating the narrative that reaches the public? In an age of unprecedented ecological disruption, who benefits from this kind of glossy detour away from reality?

Is it journalists making editorial decisions? Is it tourism boards seeding optimism? Is it advertisers looking for the next campaign that disguises collapse as opportunity?

Whatever the answer, it is clear that we are not getting the full story. We are getting the story someone wants us to see.

The oceans are warming. The species are shifting. The press is smiling.

The call we need

This story should have been reported differently.

It should have raised questions about the ecosystems these animals are leaving behind. It should have explored how increased tourism pressure could harm the very species it hopes to celebrate. It was framed as an economic opportunity.

That is not the whole story.

We need a press willing to call a crisis what it is. We need journalism that shines a light on the slow violence of warming oceans. We need reporting that explains that a longer stay from manta rays is not a tourism bonus. It is a symptom. It is a glitch in a system we have overheated.

If you are a journalist, question the angle. If you are a reader, question the framing. If you work in conservation, tourism or policymaking, resist the urge to sanitise or soften the truth.

We cannot photograph our way out of collapse. We need watchdogs, not marketers. We need facts that sting, not Instagram fairytales with hashtags.

Marine megafauna are not lingering because things are better. They are lingering because something is wrong.

Tourists may get their photos, but beneath the surface, something is breaking.