Australia's Heron Island: A Canary In The Coal Mine For Coral Reefs?

Heron Island is located on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, about 25 miles off the northeast coast of Australia.
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NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris traveled to Australia's Great Barrier Reef to find out how the coral reefs are coping with increased water temperature and increasing ocean acidity, brought about by our burning of fossil fuels. Day 1: Richard gets a hefty dose of bad news.
I've seen the future, and it isn't pretty.
That's a tough sentence to write because the setting for this unhappy discovery is spectacular. Heron Island sits in tropical turquoise waters about 25 miles off the northeast coast of Australia. It's an island on the far southern end of the Great Barrier Reef — one of our planet's most dramatic natural features, akin to the tropical rain forests, only submerged.