Animal? Plant? Both? What! This Essential Life Form Needs Our Attention
Coral reef agencies in Guam sign an innovative partnership agreement to make every effort to give corals around the globe a fighting chance in their warming ocean world.
Håfa Adai! Hello! Oh you can’t see me? Maybe that’s because I’m a 30 by (at its max width) 12 mile island holding a lovely community of 168,801 people in the middle of the ocean. Come closer…closer…closer…yeah you still can’t see me.
It’s Guam y’all.
Roughly 56 to 33.9 million years ago, in between the Pacific and Philippine Sea tectonic plates, a series of volcanic eruptions slowly but surely built the foundation of the Mariana Islands, which is a chain of small islands in the middle of the Philippine Sea. It includes the islands of: Guam, Rota, Tinian, Siapan, Anatahan, Guguan, Alamagan, Pagan, Agrihan, Asuncion, Maug, Zealandia Bank, Farallon de Pajaros and Farallon de Medinilla. The Chamorro people are the largest ethnic group and settled the island approximately 3,500 years ago. You can find this all in the link but it’s just so cool!
Around this glorious island, an incredibly diverse array of coral reefs covers roughly 42 square miles. FUN FACT: Guam is home to 128 species of sponges😭. I have yet to dive amongst a healthy coral reef, but I imagine it is one of the world’s most beautiful sights. The ocean is the greatest wonder of the world. It is more complex and vibrant and balanced than anything tangible we have created. Right now, our species isn’t treating the ocean with the respect it deserves. Some of us directly take from it more than is needed and give little thought to the indirect and long-term consequences these habits have on it’s ability to thrive. Some don’t leave behind enough for species to replenish. Most live their lives not knowing the indirect impact they have on this community of highly evolved life. Modern-day practices in almost every industry destroy a habitat that is millions of years older than we are. We are children in this world and the ocean can be our teacher if we let it.
Lately I have told the world around me that my sister is a mermaid.
I do this because it’s true! She spends her days diving off the coasts of Guam and swimming through the coral reefs amongst the areas of abundant life and areas stripped of it completely, amongst the most beautiful schools of fish you’ve ever seen and what can only be described as an underwater desert. Since 2018, Claire Moreland-Ochoa has been on the Island of Guam attending the University of Guam and working as a researcher and coral hero at the university’s Marine Lab. The lab dips its toes in many different pools making strides, through research, in all of these topics:
coral genetic connectivity across the Pacific
fisheries health
sea turtle nesting behavior
coral diseases
endolithic algae
coral nurseries
diver effects on coral reefs
shark genetic connectivity within the Marianas
You know me. Mother Nature is my Queen! I can’t help it. The ocean is a vast system involving many food chains. Each affect the other, and coral is an essential part of that ecosystem. Without coral reefs, there are no habitats for fish and that just means leaving a bunch of amazing, little bubble munchers homeless. But friends, I have some good news. The University of Guam, along with the Guam Bureau of Statistics and Plans, the Guam Department of Agriculture, the Guam Environmental Protection Agency and UnderWater World, Inc. have all deemed it necessary to send aid to the corals forming the Guam Reef Restoration and Intervention Partnership (GRRIP).
Coral. What is this magical under-the-sea forest? I have to tell you, when I learned more about coral, I was shocked. Corals are both plant and animal! On one coral body there are tons of little individual coral polyps. They consist of a mouth, tentacles, a simple gut, and a whole lotta spunk! They pull food in from the open water, but a lot of times for coral, food is scare out there in the great big blue, so, living inside each little coral buddy are even tinier little algae (plant cells). What are plant cells best at? Photosynthesis! They take the light of the sun and produce enough sugars to sustain themselves as well as give the coral a little extra snack when it needs it. This is true friendship! Much like the symbiotic relationship we see between plants on land and the fungi that grow on their roots, these plant cells work together with each individual little coral polyp, allowing for both to thrive and survive on a giant calcium body. This is why when corals die, you are left with the white skeleton of a once-thriving being.
I don’t know if you knew about the mass coral bleaching events that have been hitting coral reefs globally, but the amount of loss is huge…it’s large y’all. It leaves behind giant coral graveyards, and once an area dies, it is extremely difficult for it to come back on its own. Don’t worry! Help is on the way little buddies!
Listen though, Claire isn’t alone. UOG has a whole community of students, faculty, and supporters working together in this effort to save the coral. Justin T. Berg, who is a UOG graduate student studying biology, is another coral hero and I just can’t help but get teary at the love that pours out of these humans for their coral friends. “We saw the corals recover rather slowly,” Justin explains. “The length of recovery indicates that corals are vulnerable during this time and management efforts may be particularly necessary during this period to reduce coral mortality.”
Providing routine maintenance during the bleaching seasons seemed like an obvious must, but the true aid came from giving the coral REEFS the ability to protect themselves against warming water that was bound to come. The first mass coral bleaching was all the way back in the summer of 1997. Coral reefs are these amazing, symbiotic plant and animal hybrid communities that provide the biological portion of CO2 absorption in the ocean and right now the ocean is absorbing just under a third of man-made CO2 emissions. Thank you so much ocean for still working so hard to keep our air clean! The world has been absorbing CO2 very skillfully for so long, and then we came along and dug it all up and burned it right back into the air in mass quantities. It just goes against the science people!
I feel at ease though because my mermaid of a sister has been using the resources UOG has to build her thesis “Restoring Blue Coral in a Blue World: Reproductive Timing and Asexual Propagation of Heliopora coerulea”, and Claire is working her fins off to find a solution for our struggling friends. It helps a ton that in November of 2019, “coral restoration efforts on Guam received a funding boost of $856,000 for the next three years. The funds were awarded to the University of Guam on Nov. 18 by the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation through its National Coastal Resilience Fund and will be matched with $596,000 raised by the university, bringing the total to $1.4 million.” This is amazing y’all! Put your money toward good things and good people — it’s worth it!
This great undertaking involves propagating types of coral that have survived through bleachings and mortality events and then out-planting them on structures made and designed for them. It’s like Claire’s a parent to a bunch of little coral babies and it just makes me want to cry and squeeze their cheeks…or branches.
The focus of many coral restoration projects worldwide has been propagation and outplanting “staghorn Acropora”, which has proven to hold it’s own in warm water. However, much like the forests of the earth, corals need diversity. This is where Claire steps in…swims in…ok I’m done! Claire fell in love with the gorgeous and powerful octocoral: “ Heliopora coerulea” seeing it as a strong contender for rebuilding reefs. During propagation and out planting, Claire has been collecting every bit of data possible all geared toward determining optimum planting density, maximizing genetic diversity, and evaluating environmental influences that impact the process. This is what it takes y’all. We are putting our planet in a position of needing a lot of extra help. This huge, highly evolved ball of life is struggling BECAUSE OF US. Instead of the acting like the aware, intelligent beings we are with the ability to foreshadow, we act more like locusts. Mindlessly consuming everything in our path. The difference between us and the locusts is…we know what we’re doing.
If you’re thinking, “Well, what can I do? I’m not a coral researcher so how can I help the coral?” I will tell you exactly what you can do:
🐳 Eat less fish! Or eat no fish at all! It’s something most ocean conservation organizations won’t tell you, or have on their website…🙄 Fishing practices are detrimental to the health of coral reefs. Some fisheries care so little that they drag gigantic, weighted nets across miles and miles of ocean floor, ripping up and killing everything in it’s path just hoping they catch a good amount of the fish they actually want in the process. It’s bad y’all.
🐳 Something else to think about is the plastic pollution. While most of the damaging pollution in the ocean is fishing gear, a lot of it is plastics that only ever break down into smaller plastics. The fish end up consuming tons of these micro-plastics and then when you eat the fish, you eat the plastic. So who knows, you might be eating little bits of a bottle someone threw on the ground 20 years ago. I won’t go into this too much because we all know…we all know!
🐳 If you’re not willing to give up fish and have a little extra $ lying around, donate! Give support to groups like UOG Marine Lab.
🐳 Talk about it! Share your newfound love of coral with all your buddies because awareness is really the first step. Some people don’t know that the corals are struggling, and you could be their Octopus Teacher. If you haven’t seen that documentary you must go to Netflix now and watch it!
I highly encourage you to look into this incredible act of love that is happening on the tiny island of Guam because marine researchers like my sister Claire are doing work that will positively influence the entire world and that’s what FOG is all about. So let’s give attention and focus to those out there who are dedicating their lives to making the world better for all of us.
Stay well my friends!
yours truly,
Sacredtothewood✍︎
P.S. There isn’t a coral emoji…what is up with that! Revolt!
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