You know, early in my career, I was
extremely lucky. I did all of my PhD
research in Jamaica on the north shore
of Jamaica. And was lucky enough to dive
on some spectacular reefs and there was
one wall dive that- you'd swim across
the reef at about 10 or 15 feet and
you'd come to the edge and you'd look
down and it was a solid drop-off like a
mountain under water. And you'd swim over
the edge and you could go indefinitely,
frankly. And there were these massive
corals growing out of the side of this
mountain. It was so beautiful. It was
called the Rio Bueno wall. I went diving
there many many times and there was a
big development being planned at the
mouth of the river that fed into this
place and that entire reef system died
as a result of sediments pulled down
that river in under two weeks. So
something that had been there for many
thousands of years eradicated by a very
poor set of decisions from ourselves. You
become emotionally attached to these
places and I can't go back to a place
that we have so recklessly destroyed. I'd
rather remember what it was rather than
what it became. It was shocking enough to
see it damaged beyond repair. You know,
when I started working on coral reefs in
the mid 80s, coral bleaching and global
warming weren't even a part of the
conversation. And we had a very very
large warming event in 1998, a more minor
one in 2010,
a larger one in 2015 and 2016, and the
predictions for the future are really
dire. What you can notice then, when you
look at 1998 to 2010 was 12 years to
2015/2016, six years, and it's predicted
that we will have warm waters that will
kill corals potentially every year in
the future. It's horrible for me to have
to say this but we've already lost 50%
of the world's reefs. Just pause for a
minute and think about that. 50% of the
world's reefs. You know that's a really
important number to keep in mind when
you think about the fact that a quarter
of all fish that live in the ocean spend
time on a coral reef. So now, essentially,
that quarter has to fit into half as
much space. We talk about mangroves, we
talk about coral reefs, we talk about
tropical rainforests, savannas. Essentially
these are all different ecosystems that
are like pieces of jigsaw puzzle that
create the picture that we call planet
Earth. And that picture is dependent on
all of the pieces to be fully functional
and fully visible. When we start losing
whole ecosystems, as is now a threat for
coral reefs, we really don't know how
that's going to affect the entire
function of the planet, and the more of
those pieces we take out, the more
uncertain the future will look. Think
about a remote tropical Pacific island.
In some of those islands, 70% of the
protein eaten by people comes from the
coral reef. So in those places, there is
not enough food.
And then, we've lost the natural barrier
that protects the land itself. Less land,
less places for people to live. What will
happen is, those people who are starving
with nowhere to live will have to move,
ecological refugees that will be coming
to a place near you and competing for
the resources that you value. You know,
I'm a scientist, so everything I do is
about generating new knowledge that is
based on data and evidence and when we
look at climate change, there is no doubt
now that all evidence points to the fact
that we are in human induced climate
shift. Never before has the climate
changed at such a high rate. A large
concern for me at this point is whether
or not our desire to debate the problem
will take so long that by the time we
decide to intervene, implement things
that could help corals. Until we do the
ultimate action which is to mitigate the
greenhouse gases. If we take too long in
deciding to assist coral reefs to
survive, there'll be nothing left to
protect.
