Reefs of Hope South Pacific Expansion

The Reefs of Hope Pacific Island expansion is set at full speed ahead as 2025 brings opportunities of exponential expansion and partnership with more island nations.  Some of these islands had primoral age reefs of impressive size and diversity.  It is a sight increasingly rare as the hot year 2024 took many more large swaths of these sea jungles.

To encompass more island nations into the astounding shared science agreement which is based on methods developed by Corals for Conservation's lead scientist with more than 30 years of keen reef observation and field testing, formal agreements are being signed.  This step assures accountability and helps strengthen the network so that all parties benefit from newest developments and best emergency methods during extreme heat events.  The formal agreements also serve to bind together in cooperative ways Fisheries Ministries and coastal tribal ancestral stewards of the reefs.

By way of introduction:  Here's the brief history of Austin Bowden-Kerby's kinship with corals and his personal journey of dedication to sparing corals--much of this work, especially in the beginning was visionary.  For the benefit of us all on planet earth, his intuitive insight still keeps his work ahead of what's predicted and this spring-before-told-to-jump nature is an advantage.  The advance of Global Warming has defied predictions:  it's like dumping puzzle pieces on the table.  Austin is one who can see connections between the colored pieces; the scramble of deviant edges fit together in his mind.  Austin connects loss of keystone coral species which attract spawn with scent to other variants like shifts in predators, types of algae, currents, influences of direct sunlight or observed cooling in the aftermath of cyclones.    Nancy Clark: GG Project Leader

As a young man who was introduced to Fijian corals, Austin was enchanted by the beauty and the pulsation of a living sea system. 

"I only started in earnest with the corals in about 1989 or 1990 in Pohnpei.  I began to search for a PhD program and in May 1992 when I went to Israel, I figured out I needed to go to UPR.  We arrived in Puerto Rico the summer of 1993.  I started the coral work there in 1994.

For the December 2024 Reef Futures Conference held in Cancun, Mexico, I was one of many keynote speakers.  Also Duke's COP28 film was shown.  Here I'm pictured showing Felix from Jamaica how to use Google Earth Maps to find the ideal nursery sites.  It is possible to identify protected sweet spots sites by judging depth from intensity and shades of blue coloration.  Then the next day, I taught 25 from Belize, Colombia, Mexico and that Caribbean region the same skills in an impromtu workshop."  Austin

Austin, the noted original pioneer of 30 years for coral restoration and preservation, was a keynote speaker at the recent Reef Futures Conference in Mexico.  His updated message was enthusiastically embraced:  500 new people read his ocean paper in the wake of this gathering of like-minded dedicated coral scientists.  Key points covered as follows:

1.  With the rapid upswing in ocean temperatures, we have reached the endgame for corals, and so what worked for two decades no longer does.

2.  Urgent action is required to move as many heat-resistant corals as possible to the safety of cooler water sites, selected for having both good circulation and protection from destructive storm waves.

3.  Our focus now must be Facilitated Adaptation and Recovery which is the key thrust of the Reefs of Hope strategy- the first and only coral-focused plan endorsed by the United Nation's Decade of Ocean Science.

4.  Our work creates dense coral recovery patches which restore coral reproduction and supercharge the natural recovery of the wider reef ecosystem, creating irrestible settlement signals that atract coral and fish larvae and encourage them to settle within the recovery patch and nearby.

5.  As ocean temperatures rise, we need massive and unified action!  Working together with governments, NGOs, resorts, and communities, we are working to create a Reefs of Hope global network which will hopefully buy at least two more decades for the corals, enabling us to preserve our precious coral diversity in spite of the firestorm called Global Warming!

In 2025, all over the Pacific using the Reefs of Hope model, countries will be fine-tuning their plans and supercharging coral reef rescue utilizing natural processes for a positive and faster effect on a larger marine area. A partial list of those countries where the work is already in progress includes these island nations:  Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Fiji with new nurseries established in the BULA area, and also plans to help again in Kiribati. 

Every gift exponentially expands the critical work of relocating and saving corals.

It's no longer a doomsday prognosis for the health of coral reefs thanks to all of our caring donors!  Happy 2025 ahead as our work to save a keystone ecosystem speeds up.

Vinaka, sincere thanks and Happy New Year 2025,  Austin