By Austin Bowden-Kerby | Reefs of Hope Coral Scientist
Greetings to all of our C4C Reefs of Hope supporters and partners.
Things are looking quite scary for coral reefs as ocean temperatures are soaring to record levels due to the Super El Nino. NOAA predicts that most coral reefs of the southern hemisphere will experience a moderate to severe marine heat wave resulting in mass coral bleaching and death starting in Jan/Feb and continuing until early May. On top of this developing threat, IUCN has just updated their "red list" and they have determined that 44% of all coral species are now in danger of extinction, with the numbers growing with each passing year, and with 96% of all coral reefs predicted to be essentially dead by 2075. We can not wait any longer to act!
Two weeks ago I decided that enough is enough, as absolutely no plan is being proposed to save corals from the marine heat wave globally, and so C4C finally has launched "The Great Coral Rescue" via the coral reef community's NOAA sponsored Coral List.
The Great Coral Rescue has two strategies, one for the hot season and another for the cool season. When summer marine heat waves approach of as a coral population begins to bleach, whole coral colonies are rescued from extreme heat and exposure, moving the jeopradized colonies into nursery structures above the silt and protected from predators. If being carried out during a mass bleaching event, the unbleached "super" corals are preferentially taken, in order to secure them as the temperatures increase, creating a gene bank of proven heat adated corals. Fragmentation is not done in the hot, high UV, season as the corals are already stressed, and the fragments often bleach and can die from sunburn.
The strategy for the cooler months shifts to collecting 10-15cm coral fragments, normally just one per colony, from as many corals in the stressed shallows as possible. These fragments are put into rope nurseries located in cooler waters where the corals grow into grapefruit to basketball sized colonies within 1-3 years and are ready for planting. Our plan is to rescue over ten thousand corals by next August. When planting rescued corals, they are grouped according to their species, to restore reproduction. Rather than planting a million corals, Reefs of Hope seeks to restore reproduction to declining coral species, sending out millions of coral larvae and letting nature do the rest.
A key strategy will involvement of the tourism industry, as hundreds of resorts in the South Pacific depend on coral reefs. MAny resorts have expressed interest, and we already have working relatonships with five resorts in Fiji, two in Vanuatu and one in Samoa, lowering out field costs considerably. We have approached the Fiji Hotelier's and Toursm Association, and with their full support have made a strategy to reach out to the entire industry locally. The regional universities have trained over 1,000 Pacific Island marine studies and environmental science graduates over the past decade, and the plan is to find the resources to train and place 100 of these local scientists as Reefs of Hope professionals, for employment at resorts participating in The Great Coral Rescue. Each resort will be expected to work with the nearby reef owning Indigenous community, establishing no-take Tabu areas and carry out COTS removal activities as a foundation for the coral rescue work.
We sit in a unique position at this crutial moment, as we have the only proven methods that can save large numbers of corals from death. A similar marine heat wave approached Fiji at the end of 2023, and we created the largest coral rescue nursery ever, moving over a thousand coral colonies from shallow reef flat areas of extreme heat stress to cooler waters nearby. Bula Rescue Nursery "Bula Reef" was the result. All of the rescued corals excaped the bleaching, while hundreds of thousands of corals left behind turned bright white in the heat and perished in temperatures that reached 36C (97F). We are now returning to these same shallow reefs to rescue the 5-10% of corals that survived. As we have returned, we have discovered another threat, that COTS have been killing off much of what has survived, and so we have removed over 200 COTS over the past week. We also have found that the surviving corals are so few and far between that most are >10 meters from others of their species, which means that fertilization during spawning is very low, and so gathering far flung survivors and planting them together within a nursery also restores reproduction! Last Friday night we witnessed the mass spawning of corals on Bula Reef from 9:30 to 10:30pm- an amazing snowstorm from our rescued corals, sending out larvae to the wider reef system!
We have been hard at work for 10 days now with a team of ten, supported with free accommodation and meals by Plantation Island Resort. The resort has also helped with materials and fuel for our boat. We have developed a new "coral dome" structure of bent iron bars tied together and coated with marine epoxy, and have build 26 of these coral planting domes for the Fiji sites and so far planted 14 domes, rescuing 40 coral genotypes per dome. We have already secured over 1,000 additional coral colonies from the coming hot water.
In late September program Scientist Dr. Austin travelled to Vanuatu for two weeks to launch the program, training eight people and with eight coral domes built and some 320 heat adapted coral colonies moved from hot to cooler waters nearby. Many more domes will be created in the coming months as the water warms. The team that was trained carried out on their own a successful "Pinktober" women's reproductive cancer awareness event that received good press coverage (see link to the report).
Kind regards, and thanks so much for your continuing support,
Vinaka vakalevu from the Corals for Conservation team.
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PS: I have copied the following from our field report for any who want more information:
Links:
By Austin Bowden-Kerby, Phd | Corals scientist for Reefs of Hope Expansion
By Duke Addleman | Filmographer, photographer, and editor for C4C
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