Australia is doing absolutely everything to protect its most iconic ecosystem — except, perhaps, the one thing that really matters.

The project involves robots, one of the world’s largest research aquariums, and droves of world-renowned scientists. The scale is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

But even then, will it be enough?

The first thing to know about the Great Barrier Reef is that it’s utterly enormous. It covers about 133,000 square miles, making it significantly larger than the entire country of Italy. And despite the name, it’s not really one reef but a collection of 3,000 or so individual ones that form a reef archipelago.