The pilots of the two Harrier planes had intended to drop their four bombs, weighing a total of 4,000 lbs, on the Townshend Island bombing range, near Rockhampton in Queensland. But they were forced to abort their mission when the island was not cleared, and, low on fuel and unable to land with their bombs, they jettisoned them into the sea.
“Have we gone completely mad?” said Larissa Waters, the Green Party’s spokesman on the Great Barrier Reef. She described the dumping of the bombs as “outrageous”.
“Is this how we look after our World Heritage area now? Letting a foreign power drop bombs on it?”
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest living structure - a coral reef stretching for 1,500 miles along the Australian coastline. It is home to 1625 types of fish, and more than 30 species of whales and dolphins.
Russell Reichelt, chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said the four ten-foot bombs would be retrieved by divers.
“It was well away from any sensitive habitat,” he said. “The impacts on the environment are negligible.”
The emergency happened on the second day of the joint training exercise Talisman Saber, which every two years brings together 28,000 US and Australian military personnel over three weeks.
The US Navy and Marine Corps were working with Australian authorities to investigate the incident, the Navy said, adding that the bombs were dropped into more than 160 feet of water away from coral to minimise possible damage to the reef. None of the bombs exploded.