Innovation at Sea

Today we’re talking about coral reefs.

What do you know about Coral Reefs? Did you know that less than one percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by coral reefs? That’s really not a lot. Still, I’m sure you’ve probably heard about them. Maybe you’ve even been lucky enough to have swam in a coral reef. It’s so incredible, all the colours and fish are all so beautiful…. But have you heard that reefs like Australia’s own Great Barrier Reef are dying? They’re disappearing.

Do you wonder… if coral reefs only make up 1% of the Earth’s surface, how important can they really be? Does it really matter if they disappear?

The answer is ABSOLUTELY. Yes, it absolutely matters. Let us explain.

Healthy coral reefs are home to an extraordinary range of plant and animal life that doesn’t exist anywhere else on the planet. Coral reefs support more than 800 hard coral species and more than 4,000 species of fish. We all know how important the rain forests are… all the different trees and animals. Well think about this. Life on a coral reef is even more diverse, even more varied, than life in a rain forest.

The fish that breed on the reefs also feed an estimated 300 million people each year. For many coastal communities, the marine life on their reefs is their main source of food and income, so losing their reefs would mean losing their livelihoods and… their dinner.

Let’s think about that for a moment. 300 million people is a lot of people from around the world. The entire population of Australia is only around 25 million people! If you take all the people who are in Australia, and then copy that 12 time, then you would get 300 million people. So that’s 12 Australia’s needing food from the few coral reefs in the world. Thats a lot of food from an area that’s only about 1% of the Earth’s total.

Now think … what happens if the reefs disappear? What if they die? The fish would die also. And with the fish gone, where is everyone going to get their food from? Hmm… they probably wouldn’t have enough to eat. It’s a pretty scary thought. Terrifying really.

During this season of Innovation at Sea, we speak about medicine and marine bioprospecting. Have a listen if you get the chance. In it, we mention that scientists are just starting to discover life in the ocean as new sources of medicines to treat everything from sore muscles to cancer. Now, coral reefs are home to the most biodiverse collection of animals, meaning they have the most different species of any other habitat. Even more than the rainforests on the land. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the largest living structure on the planet and can actually be seen from space! It alone is home to over 1625 species of fish and over 600 of the 800 known types of corals. It supports hundreds of birds as well as sharks, rays, whales, dolphins and sea snakes. It’s also home to 6 of the 7 world’s species of marine turtles. I could go on. I mean… it’s just teaming with life. And it makes sense that losing the reef will also mean losing the opportunity to explore and discover the many different species that live there. And not to just discover and appreciate their life, but to also potentially discover new treatments and medicines that could help billions of people around the world. Maybe the cure for COVID is in the reef’s watery depths?? Who knows… Just think!

Another huge benefit of coral reefs is economic. Every year, millions of scuba divers and snorkelers visit them to enjoy their beauty. Local economies receive billions of dollars from visitors to reef regions through diving tours, recreational fishing trips, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses that support tourism. It’s estimated that the Great Barrier Reef is worth around $6 billion to the Australian economy a year. That means that there are a lot of people who depend on coral reefs to earn their living and if the reef disappeared … what would they do? That’s a pretty scary thing for most adults to think about .

So, hopefully we’ve convinced you to understand how important the coral reefs are to this planet. They’re a little like you really – small but mighty.

And while these coral reefs only cover 1% of the planet, this percentage is at risk. The coral reefs are dieing. So, what’s actually killing the planet’s coral reefs?

First, there’s that big umbrella called climate change.

Human activity is changing the world around us and the planet is responding. We have come to understand that there is a direct connection between our interaction with the environment and the climate drastically changing. We know that the temperature of the ocean is increasing with global warming. And Coral can’t survive if the water temperature is too high. If the water is too hot it leads to what scientists call coral bleaching. Essentially the coral in these too warm waters can’t survive and they die. When coral die, it losses all it’s beautiful and vibrant colours and turns white, just like someone poured bleach on it.

Peter Thomson, the UN Special Envoy for the Oceans, leading the Decade of Oceans presents this about coral reefs

Then there are destructive fishing practices. Those 300 million people we mentioned earlier need to eat and people are always looking for easier ways to do things. And we know that innovation is a double edged blade, sometimes it’s really great, but other times it can be not so good. Some fishing practices include using cyanide – a poison that can be deadly. They pour the cyanide in the water to stun but not kill the fish, making them easier to catch. Cyanide is a deadly poison and is harmful to all of the fish in the habitat where it’s used as well as to the coral. Another damaging fishing practice is blast or dynamite fishing. Yes, it is pretty much what it sounds like. Dynamite fishing is where explosives are thrown into the water to kill the fish so that they rise to the surface to be collected. Well you can imagine the damage this does to the coral! Now, these are just 2 examples of destructive fishing practices. There are lots of other problems with the way that fishing is done in reef areas so they’ve all got to be addressed to protect the reefs.

Pollution is another huge problem. We’re not just talking about all the plastic that is ending up in our water system. That is incredibly bad. But the pollution that is also a much bigger problem is from our land-based activities washing out into the ocean and to our reefs. Pollution such as waste, sewage, chemicals from farming and oil pollution … they are all terribly poisoning to reefs. These toxins can be dumped directly into the ocean or they are washed into rivers and carried out to the ocean. Some pollutants, such as sewage and runoff from farming, increase the level of a chemical called nitrogen in the seawater. When you increase nitrogen in the water you get heaps and heaps of algae, which then ‘smothers’ reefs by cutting off their sunlight.

There is a lot more we could talk about, just on the reasons that coral reefs are dying. And maybe you could do further research into this, we’ve just scraped the surface. But with every bad, it’s important for us to look at and understand what is being done to protect and restore the coral reefs for the future and to have conversations about what we can do to help.

It’s important to understand the history of scientific research into reefs. The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland is the largest reef system in the world. It might surprise you, but scientists only started to be really interested in these reefs about 90 years ago. Before that sailors were deadly afraid of the reefs as it could wreck a ship in the blink of an eye. In the Great Barrier Reef alone, there are around 30 known shipwreck sites of historic importance.

Let’s go back a little bit in time. Between 1928 and 1929, a group of scientists from the Royal Society of Britain, the University of Queensland and the Australian Museum, spent a whole year exploring a section of the reef and documenting their findings. This research was the starting point for our official records of coral reefs. There’s nothing before!

Despite this year-long investigation of the mysteries of the reef, there doesn’t seem to have been much ongoing research or efforts to protect it until the late 1960s. It’s value to the planet wasn’t really understood, known or appreciated. In 1967 the Queensland Government advertised for companies to express interest in mining lime on Ellison reef. The lime could be used in cheap fertiliser. Thankfully a group of locals started up fierce opposition to the proposal. The Government had said that the reef was dead but the locals took surveys and proved that there was a thriving ecosystem of coral and fish. Without thorough research, from scientists and locals, who knows what could have happened!

But no sooner had they won that battle by taking the Government to court, the politicians tried to open up the reef for companies to drill for oil! Again, people power won and in 1975 the Great Barrier Reef was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Area. It’s also listed as 1 of the 7 natural wonders of the world. You would think that would have been the end of all the talk about mining the reef, but even in 1979 the mining minister of the time, a man named Ron Camm, told the ABC’s Nationwide program “there’s been no scientific evidence ever submitted that crude oil will destroy coral”, he even went as far as to say that crude oil promoted the growth of coral, which is totally untrue!

Thankfully the mining didn’t go ahead but it took a battle by conservationists that lasted more than 12 years.

Since Australia’s Great Barrier Reef became a protected marine park, scientists have spent more time investigating and documenting life there.

From these efforts we know that the number of corals on the reef have halved since 1985, but that things have been problematic for a lot longer than that.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland, says testing shows that farming was impacting the reef as early as the 1830s and 40s. At first the problems were because of soil run off from farms which made its way into rivers. The nutrients in the soil were different to those that occurred in the ocean and they weren’t good for coral health.

Then after the second world war there was an increase in fertiliser use and this lead to outbreaks of a mean starfish called the crown of thorns starfish. This is a coral predator, it destroys coral. In fact, around half of coral loss today on the reef is believed to be a direct result of the crown of thorns starfish, so that’s a pretty big deal.

Now might be a good time to press pause and have a chat with the people around you about what things you might be able to do to protect our precious Barrier Reef.

What did you come up with?

Some things that you can do, if you’re visiting a reef, is don’t touch and don’t take souvinirs. Enjoy it and leave it for others to enjoy after you.

Because Climate Change is one of the biggest threats to reefs, we must be conscious of the things that we are doing to help reduce climate change.

Educations is important too. Making sure that people understand how valuable our coral reefs are by talking about them helps to make sure that everyone is on board with saving them.

There’s also some really big, cool projects that are taking place around the world. There are artificial reefs being created. These are human made structures that are placed into the ocean and where reefs are encouraged to grow and flourish. Some sunken ships get turned into reefs, or structures are purpose built. There’s even a location on the Gold Coast where there are reef sculptures being created.

All of this talk about the reefs dying sounds pretty scary for the future of our reef, but there is hope. All sorts of people – scientists, engineers and even politicians from all around the world, are working on a variety of solutions to help restore and conserve coral reefs.

One such scientist here in Australia is Professor Peter Harrison of Southern Cross University. Idea Evolution was lucky enough to catch up with Professor Harrison to talk about his work on regenerating coral reefs.

Professor Harrison was a lead scientist in a team that discovered that coral have what we call “mass spawning events”. Did you know… Coral aren’t plants. They are actually classified as animals! True story. And just like any animal, they release eggs and sperm which need to come together to fertilise and create new corals. The mass spawning events are where lots of coral release the eggs and sperm out into the big wide ocean, all at the same time. Normally a lot of these would be lost, either eaten by fish or simply separated and washed away in the water. But Professor Harrison has worked out a way to capture the spawn and encourage fertilisation – or create new baby coral. He is then able to release the tiny live coral polyps back onto reefs to promote growth. That is seriously Cool huh?

There’s been quite a bit of success with this technique from a restoration project in the Philippines which started in 2012. There have also been successful pilot projects on our own Great Barrier Reef.

To improve things even more, Professor Harrison has teamed up with an engineer, Professor Matthew Dunbabin. Together they’re using a robotic design to help distribute the baby coral at Moore Reef near Cairns which is in North Queensland. And do you want to know something amazing…. The project is funded in part by the Tiffany & Co foundation – yep the people who make the jewelry. See, everyone can do their part to help protect the coral reefs.

Peter & Matthew’s project was trialed last year with some success. The approach of combining coral ecology and robot technology is both new and exciting for scientists working on reef restoration.

The latest robots are called LarvalBots and they follow on from an original design which was called RangerBots. These new and improved robots can not only distribute coral babies, they can also assist by gathering data for scientists. And as we’ve mentioned, this research is incredibly important. Information on water quality, or the location of the deadly Crown of Thorns starfish, will all go towards our better understanding and management of this precious natural resource.

This is a really exciting example of science and technology coming together to address an issue that concerns us all. There are so many exciting ways people in STEM are working to understand and protect the coral reefs. And with less than 100 years of research, we have a long way to go to more fully understand this natural wonder.

I wonder… if you were going to tell someone about why it’s important for us to restore and protect coral reefs across the world, what would you say to them? What other exciting activities can you discover around how people are trying to protect this precious marine resource?

We’d love to hear your thoughts so please send us a message via the web page or share your ideas on Facebook or Instagram and tag us @idea.evolution.

We would like to extend our gratitude to Professor Peter Harrison of Southern Cross University who generously shared his time and knowledge with us to assist in putting this episode together.