When people ask me, what's your favorite island? I can never fully commit
though i know that Kingman Reef
in the tropical central Pacific Ocean as a top contender for the title it was over 15 years ago
when i first visited kingman reef our team from Scripps Institution of Oceanography was there
to get an ecological snapshot of an undisturbed coral reef and the ecosystem did not disappoint
when we splashed into the warm waters we were met by dozens of gray reef sharks and curious
red snappers the bottom was covered by thick expanses of live coral and pink
algae cementing the reef together the clear ocean surrounded us with a feeling of life and vibrance
and my view of coral reefs and their potential to thrive was changed forever these visions of
underwater vibrance however are contrasted by the unassuming top side view as we approach the island
like many coral atolls and reefs kingman has only the smallest ridges of emergent land
so as we steam toward the island it was unclear where the ocean ended and the reef began it was
only once we were within a few hundred meters that we could see the color of the ocean water change
indicating that the reef was near even with gps and modern navigational data i feared that the
reef might find the bottom of our ship before we saw it that fear was not unique to our ship's
crew but has existed since the earliest days of western navigation european explorers traders
and military who began infiltrating the tropical waters of the world in the 16th and 17th centuries
expressed a deathly aversion to coral reefs coral reefs these seafarers knew lurk just below the
surface of the ocean ready to claw the hulls of ships and steal the souls of sailors coral
reefs created atolls in the middle of the ocean and they also fouled tropical bays and passages
these seamen never knew where to expect a coral reef to emerge and who is the culprit
the corals themselves these corals were plants or animals the taxonomists at time didn't agree
but there was agreement that they grew swiftly corals were the weeds of the tropical seas and
no thought was given to dredging the beast to clear seaways and corals would always grow
back today however the narrative has shifted no longer do we worry about corals growing too much
instead we worry about the corals dying corals now known to be animals living in symbiosis with
algae and other organisms are listed among the most threatened group of organisms on the planet
in the mid 20th century we worried about breaking the fragile skeletons by ship grounding trampling
and the occasional nuclear test by the end of the century we worried about pollution and overfishing
with coastal development and a human population growing disproportionately along tropical
coastlines now we have our sites trained on the existential threat posed by climate change
heating tropical waters beyond the temperature where corals can persist
without all hands on deck we will be the last generation to ever see a coral reef
i didn't think very much about coral reefs when i was a kid growing up in a valley in los angeles
my childhood was consumed with sports and smog i thought about the plants and animals of the planet
but beyond the bugs and yards and parks my major exposure to the world's wildlife was found in
magazines audubon cousteau and some glimpses in my dad's magazines national geographic the diversity
of species and ecosystems was mind-boggling and each article was like a research expedition
but for every introduction to a species there was an equal and opposite dose of fear
stories of discovery ended with an accounting of habitat loss entails a beautiful species concluded
with the imminence of extinction there was an emotional toll for me in these stories i lamented
that the growing human population had a singular and negative impact on the wildlife of the planet
with this growing eco anxiety i turned introspective as i continued through school when
i took job placement exams the counselors would recommend positions like park ranger or forester
but i'd spent my life reading about rangers and foresters losing battles
one by one the battles that i hoped would save the natural world around
at the same time i watch engineers building elaborate products of human creativity
like satellites that could learn about distant galaxies and medical professionals solving the
most complex of health issues what would happen i thought if we combine the applied mathematics
of engineering with the wildlife challenges of a park ranger today i lead the 100 island challenge
a research campaign following the long tradition of global research here at scripps oceanography
our goal is to learn what makes one coral reef look different and work differently
than another with the 100 island challenge we're systematically conducting ecological
surveys that capture a snapshot of the fishes and the corals living on more than 100 islands using
the natural experiment that is the variability of coral reefs worldwide we work in 17 countries
spanning the tropical waters of the pacific caribbean and indian oceans and we've been using
research tools that provide scientific insights for today as well as archival data for tomorrow
new technology is helping us to share much of what we see not the least being the use of large area
imaging sometimes referred to as photomosaics in a process analogous to how we create satellite views
of cities and forests we can collect images of thousands of corals living in one location
and create a high resolution composite view of that reef and because we've entered the
era of big data in which computers and storage allow us to leap from megabytes to petabytes.
We can visualize these reefs in three dimensions without ever getting wet.
The data collected from this global gradient have allowed us to explore fundamental
hypotheses in marine ecology as well as to provide some observations and generalities
of how coral reefs are faring as we enter the 2020s at first pass the data collected support
a common theme in natural resource monitoring the structure and functioning of coral reefs change
when assaulted by intensive extraction pollution or extreme ocean events like climate change
but through these insights come more and more reports of special reefs with corals that are
growing often growing fast despite the list of modern challenges on curacao in the southern
caribbean one section of the coastline has been getting bathed by the outflow waters of
the energy and water desalinization cogeneration facility for the past 60 years my colleague mark
vermae has been watching this reef build over the past 20 years in these hot and salty waters
lives one of the most extensive populations of the boulder coral copophilia classical thinking
would suggest that all the corals would be dead but a new reef has emerged in our lifetimes
analogous stories of coral reefs thriving in extreme conditions can be found across the globe
from the outflow waters of a nuclear power plant in southern taiwan to the smoldering
trash island of the maldives these reefs are special because they deviate from the expectation
namely that corals should not thrive in hot waters in the phoenix islands lying along the equator in
the western pacific we've been tracking how a coral reef responds to changes in temperature
at the turn of the millennium the splendid coral reefs of these remote parts of the republic of
curibus received a global insult the el nino event of 2001 and 2002. the ocean temperature
rose staying unusually warm for almost a year straight and the corals bleached and died however
after about a decade we watched the reefs regrow new corals replacing the old and a reef reemerged
but the ocean keeps warming and another marine heat wave hit in 2015-16
with temperatures more extreme than 2001 this time the corals did not die in mass
despite some mortality the coral colonies soldiered through the warmth
it looked like the corals that repopulated after the first big event were different than
those that faced the second event are we seeing evidence of adaptation to a changing climate
these anecdotes of shifts in the workings of corals especially in response to a changing
climate are repeated across many of the hundred islands
the critical question arises if warmer conditions are detrimental to corals how can repeated events
of warm water lead to corals growing this is what we aim to find out the conventional
view of many ecological models is the idea of stationarity this is simplifying assumption
that the environment and the way an organism faces the environment will remain the same through time
we know that the environment is not stationary what if the organisms themselves also change
what if the corals that repopulate the phoenix islands are not different species
but a recovering abundance of a thermally adapted population of the same species
what if we're watching the workings of the corals themselves shifting through time
leveraging the levers of adaptation understanding the portfolio of biological mechanisms for
adaptation and corals and their symbionts is prerequisite for building impactful interventions
corals can adapt to changing conditions through a number of mechanisms through shifts in the
type of symbiotic algae alterations in the microbial layer or shifts in the expression
of the genetic code of the animal itself while the biological potential of these mechanisms has
been documented in laboratory studies we have no idea whether the changes are realized in nature
the hundred island challenge offers us a glimpse that corals appear not to be stationary but just
what levers of adaptation are being used while our efforts to date have elucidated what makes one
coral reef look different than another to study adaptation we must consider what makes one coral
colony look different than another we aim to unpack these fundamental ecological processes by
leveraging biological big data helping to make climate adaptation for coral reefs a reality
linking the tools of ocean observation with modern techniques and genetic sequencing and
data analysis we can start to look not just at trends and how many corals live but instead the
intricate details of which corals survive and how they did it we can document patterns of symbiosis
ecological change and evolution each the building blocks of biological adaptation
across the world's coral communities and our team at scripps oceanography is leading this
global effort with our internal facilities across uc san diego and through partnerships worldwide
we're in the midst of the grandest experiment of environmental change that modern humanity has ever
seen if we don't capitalize on this natural experiment we'll miss an opportunity that
won't just come once in a lifetime it hopefully will happen only once in the course of humanity
the opportunity and responsibility is upon us to learn how species and systems are adapting
to the changes around them adaptation is happening within corals and across entire coral reef systems
and these adaptations will spread and our team is readying to decode nature's solutions and
help them to spread faster we aim to use our relationships with scientists resource managers
and leadership worldwide to help implement these solutions that favor the persistence of
corals only nature can tell us how it'll face the future and for us to accelerate the path
to recovery we need to offer the nudges that most efficiently move reefs along a path of resilience
we need to listen to coral reefs as they tell us strategies that will navigate the challenges ahead