Coral Reef--My Epiphany

I spent a week diving the Kona Coast in 2013 and repeated the trip in 2018, going so far as to stay in the same condo, have a nephew as a dive buddy, use the same operator, and dive some of the same spots.  In that respect, I am consistent (some would say “predictable” while others might suggest “dull”) but in 35 years of dive travel, I have seldom visited the same location.  This trip revealed the effects of coral distress in a relatively short period of time (especially when one considers the growth rate of corals) and thier omnipresence in our experience.  The discoveries alarm me. 

A healthy coral on the Kona coast 2018

Diving on coral reefs in the Florida Keys (1995), Bonaire (1998), Australia (2011), Hawaii (2013 and 2018), Grand Cayman (2016) and Fiji (2017), the fields of colorful coral seemed endless and ageless.  On a drift dive with my brother in Florida tethered to the a Norwegian buoy float that marked our progress to the following boat, migrated over coral reefs that seemed to go to the limits of of our air consumption and beyond.  The Salt Pier in Bonaire was a close as one could get to residing in a tropical aquarium. The bommies of the Great Barrier Reef, I am told, are hundreds or thousands of years old.  Surely, these widely separated coral communities transcended time and space.

Daily, the internet heralds details about the recent devastation of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, a place that I visited for 10 days in 2011 and absolutely came to love.  But, I have no frame of reference for visualizing the effects of a three year “marine heat wave” (water temperatures well above normal) that from 2014 to 2017 had caused “29 percent of the 3,683 reefs comprising the Great Barrier Reef lost two-thirds or more of their corals.  This high mortality rate threatens the ability of these reefs to sustain their full ecological function.”  That still leave a lot of healthy coral in place and an emerging strategy seems to focus on the remaining corals.

A few weeks before going to Kona, I saw the movie "Chasing Coral" a film about the demise of coral in different parts of the world over a one year period.  The dramatic decline shown in shocking resolution on the big screen of the BearTooth Theater Pub in Anchorage drew gasps from the assembled matinee crowd.  But, sipping a microbrew while viewing the carnage does have a way of tempering indignation and stepping into the cold, bright sun reflected off a Alaska snowscape after does make the problem seem remote.

The areas that we dived in Hawaii suffered a coral bleaching event in 2015.  Coral bleaching occurs when corals, stressed by high water temperatures or other changes such in nutrients or light, expel symbiotic algae called zooxanthellae which give corals their color.  Seeing white coral, we describe them as “bleached."  I noticed a lot of coral rubble, algae covered sick corals being invaded by urchins, some coral that was half dead, half healthy, and wsome that seemed unaffected that seems unaffected.

A partially alive coral head, Kona coast 2018

Coral appears half alive, half dead, Kona coast 2018

Urchins and other competitors invade the coral's structure

Coral rubble

The video shows first-hand pbservations of a healthy coral that had many more fish than the nearby dying coral that had only a few reef fish swimming about its branches.

My dive buddy, Luke, remarked “you seem to be taking a lot of pictures of the coral”   
“Yeah,, “I want to get some images before I forget what I see.”  

Baselines have a way of recessing in the memory, which always seems to remember ideal underwater vistas. I know something is wrong.  I see it firsthand.  The state of coral has my attention.  The devestation is not complete.  There is as much if not more "alive" than "dying" or "dead".  But, what is the trend?  Now, I need to figure out what I can do about it.