Transcriber: oey chang Reviewer: David DeRuwe
To be upfront, I’m actually very tired of talking.
There’s so much work out there to be done. I don’t have that much time.
Actually, it was nice to meet you all. Goodbye.
Obviously, I have a few things to say.
Well, the reason why I’m tired also
is we’ve been working really, really hard, and we’ve been very, very busy
moving forward the coral project at this stage.
So two days ago, I thought, “I’ll never be able to make this talk
on time.”
But I also realized I’m somewhat in the same situation, like the corals.
They too are running out of time. And they too might not make it.
Well, the good news is they have a little bit more than 48 hours,
thankfully.
So I agreed to have this talk,
and hence, I started to gather my thoughts and do some research.
I looked up some old coral TED talks. I even called my mom.
But honestly, there’s not much what I can say more.
It’s because we researched it all, we predicted it all, we know it all,
and as Dr. Austin Bowden-Kirby said six years ago in his TED talk,
the corals are in big trouble.
And I'm probably the millionth person to say that to you.
It's because of climate change,
and the chemical component that is called CO2 is bad,
and together with its friends, the greenhouse gases,
which is mostly related to heat
because either it’s coming from burning something or digesting something.
Yeah. So what to do?
Me? What can I do?
A former basketball player in the US.
A ex-banker from Switzerland.
What can I do to help the corals?
I was 32 at the time, and I would never be able to catch up
with all these amazing heads and these brilliant scientists
and mingle with the policymakers and the real influential people.
So therefore, first things first,
I started a new journey in my life.
I started to volunteer for marine organizations.
I drastically changed my lifestyle. I sold all my possessions.
I became a vegetarian.
I soaked in all the science, the knowledge,
the experience I could get my hands on.
Most importantly though, I began to implement projects,
and I didn’t just talk about them.
I also got them done. I remember my first project:
I paid for it with the last few bucks in my savings account.
It was one of these tables. One single one.
We planted 50 corals on it, and they were all growing very nicely.
And then a storm destroyed everything.
Everything was gone. It was not much, but still it was gone.
One of the next projects was a bit bigger. It had nine structures.
We planted over a thousand corals. They grew nicely, even soft core.
Beautiful, but then a cyclone had a different idea,
and that too became history, unfortunately.
Nevertheless, this led me to the beautiful Maldives,
and I said to myself, “That’s a country relatively safe from storms,
at least for now.”
So in the North Malé Atoll, we started a good-sized coral nursery.
We started with 16 table structures,
again like these,
and expanded them throughout the year to 60.
At times, we had about 8,000 corals there growing, thriving, surviving heat waves,
attacks from triggerfish and parrotfish.
We stimulated the corals with electricity,
a process called mineral accretion technology.
We perfected the components,
brought the technology to a very stable
and predictable working level that supports corals in three things:
growth, resilience, and survival rates.
It was all going really well.
Can you guess what happened to that nursery?
Nah. It’s still there. It works. It’s still the Maldives.
So the next thing that happened, a little bit of pride settled in,
maybe something left over from my banking days,
and I thought, “We are big, we are amazing.
We are doing more than just raising awareness.
We are doing our part to help the ocean. We are saving the world. Yay!”
And then I met Sonu Shivdasani,
in my eyes “the sustainable entrepreneur and visionary.”
And he asked me,
“So can you outplant 50,000 corals every year?”
and I said, “Yeah, sure.”
Maybe I shouldn’t say that in public, so please don’t tell Sonu.
At the time, I had no clue how to pull this off.
I mean, this is something at that sort of a scale no one has ever done before.
But since I have done it before, just on a very small scale,
I was determined, I was motivated, I was confident,
and I had a great team around me.
So I knew my backpack was full with everything I needed to get this done,
to march on a path that no one ever marched before.
The situation reminds me a bit of the spaghetti marshmallow tower challenge,
which is a very interesting game,
especially if children and adults are competing in it at the same time,
Anybody knows the game? Have you heard of it?
The goal is basically to build
the highest tower with spaghetti held together with strings and tape.
And then at the end, you have to put a marshmallow on top of it.
So this all needs to be done in 18 minutes.
Now we adults, we usually start discussing and planning and designing,
and, you know, as time runs out, the tower in the end usually collapses,
whereas the children just move forward, try things out in a playful way,
mistakes, and quickly adapt to them.
Turns out that this way, the game shows the best results,
and the kids usually don’t run out of time either -
just like we did with our latest coral project.
So here we are today in March 2022 on this beautiful island in the Baa Atoll.
And I’d like to share some good news for you,
but most importantly, the corals.
Over the last six months,
we created one of the largest coral nurseries in the world.
(Applause)
Thank you.
It took us about three months,
and it consists of, again, 400 of these tables,
and it can hold and grow 50,000 corals
that we can use for outplanting every year.
Also up until now, we’ve saved more than 15,000 corals
by collecting and transporting them over 100 kilometers away
from a dredging project near Malé.
That is one of the largest coral reef relocation projects
ever done in the Maldives.
And the third good news is we are creating a coral hub
with the main focus on coral conservation and restoration here in the Baa Atoll
that will have a positive global impact on the ocean’s health.
It will bring together most advanced technologies,
science, combining them with restoration technologies
supported by the most brilliant coral scientists in the world,
so we can make sure that corals are not running out of time
and that the generations to come
will all enjoy the beauty and the security they provide for us humans.
And you know what? This has just become the new normal.
It will be considered a small step in the right direction
because it’s only the beginning of something so big.
I once more have no idea how to get it done,
but I have all the confidence that we will do it.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)