Not really, he was quite laid back. Told me to take it as naturally as possible, meaning no overdoing, specially with chemicals and stuff. He said, "if you keep adding chemicals you're making a bomb". That was a good one, regardless of veracity.
I don't know what's going on with the corals in the wild (pardon my ignorance). I hope were not screwing things up for a change but I'm sure we are.
In my opinion, there are so many different things going on in the barrier reef that I dont know if you can compare to a tiny closed system. Of course you can pull out a probe at any given point over there and stick with that, but things are always changing and are so dramatically changing that it actually gives it a balance. Cold water meets warm water, waves and wind transport so many things, theres the sun, clouds, rain, currents coming and going everywhere. If you held your probe out and moved slowly from the surface down to the deep the temperature would drop at a constant rate but would also suffer abrupt small changes along the way. Life around you would also dramatically change.
I don't know, I'm talking out of my butt, but thats the feeling I get when I dive.