Born of fire, the Galapagos archipelago evokes visions of an ecological Eden. They are volcanic,
isolated islands, so they are unique. This primordial world is home to some of the strangest
creatures on earth -- from sea-going lizards to tortoises the size of rum barrels. This
is a special place where so many strange animals are living together. Penguins, mantas, sea
lions, sea iguanas. Altogether in one place. And this strange ecosystem has very interesting
behaviors. The islands are engulfed in cold and warm ocean currents, resulting in this
unique diversity of species. You get cold water organisms and warm water organisms all
mixed. Corals are among the warm water species living in the islands- and what is happening
to them may be a harbinger of things to come. We know now that the ocean chemistry is changing
dramatically and that's because of the industrial age and all of the carbon dioxide that has
been put into the atmosphere. Corals are forecast to be impacted severely by these changes in
ocean chemistry. The isolation of these islands makes them a perfect laboratory for studying
climate change. The Galapagos Islands act as a natural laboratory because it's naturally
exposed to high CO2 conditions that provide essentially a window into the future of what
we can expect throughout the rest of the world's oceans, with the doubling and tripling of
atmospheric CO2. The other added benefit is that it has experienced two very strong El
Nino events in the last three decades. During El Niño, warm seawater temperatures cause
coral bleaching. And coral bleaching is one of the primary concerns of what coral reefs
face with climate change. So, by going into the Galapagos and studying how these reefs
respond to warmer temperatures under these naturally low pH conditions, we can gain a
window into the future. What is in store for coral reefs? Can corals survive in more acidic
oceans and cope with increased water temperatures? Major funding for this program was provided
by The Batchelor Foundation, encouraging people to preserve and protect America's underwater
resources. And by Divers Direct Emocean Club, inspiring the pursuit of tropical adventures
and scuba diving. Early Spanish explorers called them "Las Encantadas"
--"the Enchanted Islands." The Galapagos are located in the eastern Pacific,
about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. In 1835, Charles Darwin visited the archipelago,
calling it a "little world within itself." The strange creatures he encountered would
later shape his thoughts on the origins of life, and help him form his theory of evolution.
The Galapagos Islands is a really fascinating location. Because even Charles Darwin, when
he visited, noted how coral reefs were conspicuously absent from this location. Because the Galapagos
sits right on the equator. It's within the tropical belt. What really differentiates
it from the rest of the tropics is that you have this strong upwelling creating very different
conditions than what you find normally in the tropics. Upwelling is a physical process
whereby deep waters are brought to the surface. This deep water is rich in CO2 and rich in
nutrients. And when it comes to the surface, it creates these low pH locations in the ocean.
This upwelling, as well as the confluence of several currents, results in the unique
life forms living in the Galapagos. For half the year, The Humboldt, or Peru current, brings
cold, nutrient rich waters up from Antarctica. From the west, the Cromwell current also brings
cold water. Around January, the trade winds shift and the Humboldt current slackens. Now
the Panama current dominates. The Panama Current flows south from the Panama and Colombia area,
and the Panama current brings tropical organisms into the Galapagos. What Darwin couldn't see
is that corals are among these tropical organisms. Now a team of around 20 scientists have arrived
onboard the M/Y Golden Shadow to study the health of these reefs. Supported by the Khaled
bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, they will spend a month in the Galapagos as part
of the five-year Global Reef Expedition. One of the biggest barriers to oceanographers
and ecologists to study remote areas of the oceans is just getting access to it. And the
Golden Shadow and the Living Oceans Foundation is very unique in that regard that we provide
scientists from around the world the access they need. The foundation was established
by Prince Khaled bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, to conserve coral reefs around the world.
He knew that reefs are in trouble, and what he wanted was to set up a foundation that
would go out and answer some of the pressing questions about why coral reefs are dying
and what we can do to stop it. So he came up with this idea "Science without Borders"-it's
basically because there are no political boundaries between the oceans. It's all connected. And
what you do in one location, can affect another location. We go around the world to survey
these reefs. We're applying a standard protocol that was developed through a consortium of
scientists and we're applying that same survey protocol every place we go. We've developed
this model of cooperation where we invite researchers from around the world to come
on the ship and join us. And we're able to select researchers that have specific knowledge
about each region that we go to. One of the people joining them on this trip is longtime
Galapagos National Park naturalist and dive guide Mathias Espinosa. The Galapagos are
relatively new volcanic islands, formed less than five million years ago. And their history
is written into the rocks. Okay Philip, this is very interesting because this island is
an uplifted island that means that lava flowed to a place underwater, and with the pressure
of the plates that piece came out of the water. And you see some layers here, of white coral
that shows you there was a lava flow underwater and a long time of nothing but white coral
could grow on the lava flow. And then another lava flow over it. So it's very interesting
to see that there were times of lava flows then nothing, then another lava flow. And
so obviously these corals have existed in the Galapagos for thousands and thousands
of years for that layering effect to have happened. Yeah, definitely. I mean we're not
rich in corals, but it shows that we had the constant arrival of corals and growing up
to a certain point. I guess for thousands of years. One of the comments you hear all
the time is well, coral reefs have always undergone disturbance and change. And that's
absolutely true. The thing we're really concerned about is the frequency, the severity and the
duration of the changes all seem to be ramping up at scales that coral reefs have never experienced.
Now, scientists want to understand what the thresholds may be for corals to survive into
the future. Maybe you can try to anchor with a cut around
here. The strong currents near the islands can be dangerous to divers, so they consult
with local expert Mathias before their research dives.
Whatever the current is, don't let your people get into deeper water.
One way the experts study the corals is by measuring the currents that occur nearby.
So this right here is our current meter. And what we're going to do is, we set it up and
then we deploy it. The scientists want to correlate the strength of the currents
to the types of coral communities they find in an area, to better understand why certain
corals live where they do. Coral reefs that exist in the Galapagos really pale in comparison
to what you find in other parts of the world that have very high pH. There's a limited
subset of species that occur there, and they're very sparse in terms of spatial distribution.
There's very few coral reefs in the Galapagos islands. These corals weren't discovered until
the early 1970s. Dr. Peter Glynn was among the first to explore and study the reefs of
the islands. They were totally healthy. Very vibrant coral communities. All of the corals
looked in excellent condition. And so we thought that there would never be a problem there
- that coral reef development would continue into the future. But every so often the natural
balance between cold and warm ocean currents in this region goes awry. During El Nino years,
trade winds reverse direction, the cold life-giving waters of the Humboldt and Cromwell currents
dwindle, and warm waters devoid of nutrients flow in from the western Pacific and surround
the islands. And what happens is the surface waters warm considerably. And corals live
very near their upper thermal limits. And they're so sensitive that a deviation in sea
surface temperature of only one degree Celsius above the normal conditions for a month or
more, will elicit coral bleaching. A coral lives in a symbiotic relationship with algae
that live inside its tissues. And the algae photosynthesize and provide fixed carbon to
the coral host. And in turn the coral provides nutrients, a home that is free from predation.
However, the symbiosis is very restricted into a very narrow thermal range. When temperatures
warm the corals will expel their symbiotic algae that live within their tissues. And
this is called coral bleaching. So the coral can live for a period without its symbiotic
algae, but it can't live for too long. So if the stress remains for a couple months
or more, corals will start dying. I think the El Nino phenomenon has occurred for several
thousands of years, and there was just no one around to observe the early events. But
in 1982-83, we had a very severe El Nino event. In the Galapagos, the coral mortality at our
study sites ranged anywhere from 95-97%. Very high. In 1997-98, there was another very strong
El Nino event. And some of the corals that weren't affected in 82-83, suffered mortality.
So we had two very strong events occurring just in one century. So this was very unusual,
and it had a tremendous impact on corals in the eastern Pacific. On this research expedition,
scientists are going back to past study sites to see if the corals have recovered. In the
North, one species survived the second bleaching event better than the first. It seemed to
have adapted to the warmer temperature, which is a hopeful discovery for the team. We found
very substantial recovery in Darwin and Wenman. But very minimal recovery in the central and
southern Galapagos Islands. There's been coral bleaching events elsewhere that have killed
off all the corals. But what makes the Galapagos unique is that the entire reef framework itself
was actually completely bio-eroded in about 10 years. Other places usually the non-living
coral reef framework will persist over time much longer. The lack of recovery and bio-erosion
of the underlying reef framework likely are caused in part by the fact that pH is much
lower in the southern and central Galapagos. Derek measures the carbon dioxide, or CO2
levels, in the water around the islands. Research has shown that increased levels of CO2 in
the oceans will have devastating impacts on corals. The oceans act as a carbon sink for
atmospheric CO2. So the oceans naturally equilibrate with the atmosphere over time. About 30 percent
of all the fossil fuel carbon dioxide, that's what we put in the atmosphere since the industrial
revolution, has been absorbed by the oceans, which actually raises the ocean's acidity
and lowers the ocean's pH. So this process is termed ocean acidification. The more acidic
it becomes the harder it is for coral to deposit its skeleton. The rate of change in ocean
pH that's occurring right now hasn't occurred in the oceans for at least the past 300 million
years. So what that means is that organisms and animals that live in the ocean are experiencing
a change in the environmental conditions at a rate that's greater than anything they've
seen, since prehistoric times. The Galapagos serve as the perfect natural laboratory to
study how corals will be affected by more acidic oceans. So the unique nature of the
Galapagos is such that the different islands have different pH conditions. Some areas of
the archipelago already experience double the amount of dissolved carbon dioxide in
the water compared to most regions where corals exist now.
These CO2 conditions in the Galapagos basically approximate what we expect for the
rest of the oceans with ocean acidification at the middle or end of this century. To study
the coral calcification rates, Derek extracts cores from a species of coral that is common
in the Pacific. We used a pneumatic hand drill fit with a diamond coring bit at the end,
so we can attach this directly to a scuba tank.
And what this allows us to do is to take a sample down the main growth axis of the coral.
And corals lay down density bands, much in the same way that trees put down tree
rings. So every year, corals go through a natural oscillation in their skeletal density.
This process may look destructive, but its impact on the coral is similar to that of
a biopsy in a human. We take a cement plug or
use some coral rubble, that doesn't have anything living or growing on it. We plug up
the hole and then fix it with an underwater epoxy. And then the coral is able to grow
tissue right back over that that lesion within a few years. The overwhelming majority of
the time the coral isn't harmed from the sampling. Once back in the lab in Miami, Derek
analyzes the cores. So this is an example of a coral core we take out of a massive
coral skeleton. We cut it down and put it into our CAT scanner. And then with that CAT
scanner, we can look at that coral core in three dimensions of the X-ray
images, which provides us a metric of the density of the core as you go down over
time, as you look at coral growth. So what we see here is an example of about 10
years of growth from a coral core, and you see these high density peaks that occur on
regular intervals. So that's associated with the annual high-density peak formation that
occurs in coral growths. So we use the distance between these peaks to get an
estimate of the annual growth rate of coral skeletons. And then once we have that data
of coral growth with time, we can understand how various disturbances or
environmental conditions like sea temperature may have impacted rates of coral growth.
So, what we see is that the calcification rates at the different regions vary considerably.
And as you increase in pH, the calcification rates
also increase. Experts forecast that climate change will not only lead to ocean acidification,
but rising water temperatures will also lead to more frequent bleaching events. The
most recent research that's been done, has shown that globally all coral reefs are
going to begin experiencing annual bleaching events, somewhere around the year 2050. And
what we've learned in the Galapagos is that it only takes one coral bleaching event
to kill an entire reef and have that reef framework be completely eroded and
almost non-existent after 10 years. The combination of increased temperatures and
low pH are something we're just now beginning to understand the effects of on
coral reef ecosystems. There could potentially be a CO2 tipping point in the Galapagos, at
which coral reefs are no longer able to recover from strong coral bleaching events.
The only coral reef in the entire Galapagos archipelago that has persisted and survived
the repeated coral reef bleaching events, has been in a place where pH is naturally
highest. As pH declines from that location, the
coral reefs there have not fared well at all, and have shown little resilience or recovery
from the warm water bleaching events. So this suggests that there could be a threshold
to coral reef resilience from thermal stress at some kind of CO2 level. In other words,
as the pH of the oceans declines, coral reefs
will likely lose their ability to rebound from
warm water events and coral bleaching over time. So this is a very sobering future for
coral reefs based on how we expect the climate system to change.
The collection of scientific data underwater is serious business, but sometimes it is difficult
for the scientists to ignore the spectacular and unique wildlife that is all around them.
You definitely do see sea lions and they can impact your work because they are like
underwater puppies, and extremely playful. So they often times will swim away
with your gear when you're not looking. So you know it's not uncommon to see
someone swimming after a sea lion shaking their fist while doing work in the Galapagos.
Occasionally in the early days in the 70's when we were down there a penguin swam
over the corals, and so this was certainly something that you wouldn't see very often.
So that was pretty exciting. Another researcher along on the expedition
is Dr. Iliana Baums from Pennsylvania State University. Together
with one of her students, she has discovered a species of coral in the Galapagos
that was previously thought to occur only in Hawaii. It's very hard to distinguish
visually from the most common of the reef building species out here. The two species
look so much alike, the only way to tell them apart is by looking at their DNA in a lab.
To do so, and to understand how common the newly identified species is, the experts collect
coral samples in the field. The reason why we want to know how much we have of one
or the other species is because they interact with their environment very differently.
One of the species deals with climate change differently, so when water temperatures get
warm one of the species bleaches more frequently than the other. If water temperatures
keep rising with climate change you might get one species to survive better
than the other, so there might be a shift in
the ecosystem in terms of what species it is composed of. Understanding this species
diversity is crucial for managers as they try to predict how reefs will respond to climate
change in the future. The four week expedition in the Galapagos
led to the collection of a large amount of data and new insights. Scientific
research is vital for the long-term survival of Galapagos. Ecuador has some resources.
But we need to have scientists from different parts of the world to
find out what is going on in this special ecosystem like Galapagos. And as more
scientific work is done it's a great help for Galapagos. I think the corals in the southern
and central islands are not showing any signs of recovery. So that is not encouraging.
But it's a reality. And we found that the reefs continue to recover in the northern
islands. So this is encouraging. We're certainly hopeful
this trend will continue. We know coral reefs are in trouble. But what we've seen
in a lot of these areas is they are amazingly resilient and they can rebound. And we know
that climate change is predicted to just get worse. But what our hope is, is that corals
can adapt to climate change. The Galapagos and its unique creatures are a symbol of adaptation,
having provided important clues about the way life evolves on planet Earth.
Now, they may also serve as a window into the future -- providing a glimpse of how corals
may adjust to the drastic changes forecast to occur in the world's oceans.
Major funding for this program was provided by The Batchelor Foundation, encouraging people
to preserve and protect America's underwater resources. And by Divers Direct Emocean Club,
inspiring the pursuit of tropical adventures and scuba diving. And by the Do Unto Others
Trust.