[JoeAltmaier]

One crying-wolf person? That's "the environmentalists"?

The data (not hyperbole) was that the reef was in trouble and in decline. It continues to be in trouble and in decline.

"Begin recovering after disturbances" is double-talk for "continues it's alarming decline." A bit of coral growing over the sterile corpses of hundreds of miles of dead reef is maybe romantic and hopeful. But not anything to justify the "recovery" word. Mocking science for a sound-byte by one academic is corrosive nonsense.