Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size It’s not every day you get to snorkel with a Formula One driver.
I use the word “with” here in a broad sense. It’s not just me and McLaren’s young rising star, Oscar Piastri, drifting over a Whitsundays reef, pointing out undersea wonders to each other. It’s a bunch of us: reporters, McLaren employees and Great Barrier Reef Foundation staff.
It’s a special moment for Melbourne-born Piastri, 23, because he’s never seen the reef. But no one’s quite sure what it will be like today. It’s late March and the World Heritage Area is bleaching for the fifth time since 2016.
We tilt our masks to the water and hope for the best. Amid the greens and browns, and the odd blue and yellow, we see white. Not large fields of bleached coral, just singular ones, here and there.
Afterwards, standing on shore in his orange McLaren polo top, Piastri reflects on what he’s witnessed. “I definitely saw some bleached coral and unfortunately some dead coral as well, so for me it highlights why it’s so important that we’re involved in this initiative.” The “initiative” is the reason we’re here on Queensland’s Hayman Island.
McLaren is announcing that some of its best engineers will help automate the dispersal of millions of baby corals to try to support t.