Climate Action Fiji Project #21872

Emergency Response to Mass Coral Bleaching

by Corals for Conservation

Emergency Response to Mass Coral Bleaching

Project Report | Aug 24, 2023
Youth as Solution to Corals Crisis: Reef as Classroom for World Ocean Day

By Austin Bowden-Kerby, Phd | Lead Marine Scientist for Corals for Conservation

World Ocean Day with the reef as classroom

On World Ocean Day, three classrooms of students came to the reef with their teachers for a first-hand experience. Austin acted as a Pied Piper -- children naturally followed him around -- and it was exciting to have the youth seeing the familiar reef in new ways.

The Saturday after the 4th of July, more children came to be immersed in the rich diversity of the coral reef. In a project specifically geared for children in Naidiri village, kids learned how all parts fit to make an abundant habitat.

The photo below shows the last Naidiri youth, with Annelise, a Canadian graduate student Yanik, and our French and Australian interns Axel and Aaron, plus Wilson who has been a wonderful boat captain for Corals for Conservation.

Our youth are the precious building blocks for what lies ahead in saving the reefs. It may have taken the top news ranking of the distress of Florida reefs to raise worldwide awareness that immediate action is mandatory. There will be no more excuses possible for the crisis with coral reefs. The crisis is now and it is everywhere!

Corals for Conservation's rescue of heat-resistant corals to cooler reefs is making a big impact right now during this horrific die off of corals in Florida. The webinar to deal with this mass bleaching crisis went well. I was one of 6 panelists, and we had some 500 attendees. What I had to offer was very well received. The time has clearly arrived for coral-focused adaptation and keeping each species of coral alive. Fortunately, we have the films and strategies all ready for release. Now all we need is some funding and a much bigger team and even more trustworthy partners, all focused on saving the corals!

But we must do this while we still can! May God, Mother Earth, and the Universe give us the unified vision, manpower, and financial resources required!

The indigenous chiefs have approved the plan, and Plantation Island Resort, our primary partner at the site, is keen to start with a smaller BULA (12m high x 35m wide) on Nuku Reef, the moderately heat stressed middle barrier reef, to serve as the receiving nursery for heat adapted corals for their first and second years. This is where we will screen each coral genotype to confirm vigor, resilience, and to prevent any disease transfer locally. We will now need to present the plans to Fisheries and the Provincial Office and to the Kalevu. Assuming that within one year, BULA super coral nursery will be funded and ready, corals from little Bula will be "graduated"-- rotated out to the main BULA reef -- with new ones rotated in during the cool season. In like manner, smaller satellite nurseries would be created on the Ba, Ra, Yasawa, and Momi area reefs, with corals brought into BULA nursery after screening is completed.

Village communities and the indigenous youth will do the work, and must be provided on-site guidance via trained BS degree marine science graduates to become field officers resident in the communities. Two BULAS is just right, because bula bula means living or healthy! I am hoping that we have 2-3 years to complete the project, and that Mother Nature can hold off the catastrophe by sending near-miss cyclones when we most need them. She has already done that for us several times! After the BULA BULA project is done, the corals will get annual trimming for sending out to participating resorts, who will by then have hired 100 trained USP graduates to reinforce resilience and create fish habitat within community based Tabu areas all over the west. These efforts will be guided by trained coral reef adaptation officers. The Malolo site will serve as the regional and global training site for Reefs of Hope strategies, and trained people will fan throughout the region and, of course, the planet.

This may sound very grand, but it is possible and within reach if we have faith and take the next steps. This is what the coral reefs deserve.

Loving regards,

Austin

GlobalGiving's 50% match for up to $50 will be September 18th - 22nd. This is an ideal window for you FB enthusiasts to spread the word of GG's Little by Little Campaign. Click on the Share button for ways to copy this report or link into your social media. Recurring givers encouraged! C4C goal is the $50,000 initial action-now minimum needed.

Austin and all who love the reef

Garden cruise

Farming coral

Permalink

Apr 25, 2023
Our Resilient Blue Planet: Science & Nature Unite

By Austin Bowden-Kerby, Phd | Marine Biologist Adaptive Corals Researcher

Austin helping Coral Gardeners in French Polynesia

Earth Day has just been celebrated, and more grassroots organizations are now established on our favorite planet than ever before. It's taken all of us who believe that science and nature and community action can bring about positive change. The oceans and their precious reefs have a chance at survival because from the indigenous fishermen to the committed government officials, people around the globe are bonding and devoting their lives and resources to spare coral reefs from extinction. Anything less than a goal of restoring ecological diversity is unthinkable. The consequences of dying coral reefs would be a human disaster on a scale unimaginable.

Here's where Corals for Conservation has been, and here's where Corals for Conservation is going.

I am working on a plan to upscale all the lessons learned regionally, with a plan to save the coral reefs of each nation. Each plan will be tailored to the present conditions and challenges and threats, and look towards the future. On this, Kiribati is the most challenging, as they need restoration of locally extinct coral species, atoll by atoll, as their reefs are the most impacted, but if we can succeed there, we can succeed everywhere!

Tuvalu has the least impacted coral reefs, and so they need to focus on moving corals out of hot pocket reef areas into cooler reefs, as they are the only nation without any major coral bleaching thus far, so the pre-adapted corals still survive! Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia, all need to secure their now declining species by creating gene bank nurseries and patches of reproductive corals, as well as focusing on COTS (Crown of Thorns Starfish) removal.

French Polynesia needs to focus on restoring locally endangered Acropora corals to reefs where they formerly dominated, and which are now dominated by two species of cauliflower corals- Pocillopora. Parrotfish there eat up the Acropora corals, and so the pass areas with abundant sharks (which chase away the parrotfish), need to be the focus initially.

Our role needs to be that of providing workable solutions and a unified vision- a way out of the current inaction- to save coral reefs from the imminent death they face, with the horrific impacts to our region.

I am reminded of the great impact we have already had on the region when community-based no-fishing sites were established in Cuvu as a partnership with the Shangri-La resort back in 2000. That project resulted in five no-take Tabu areas, which were the first to be started on reefs in 80-100 years. This caused a transformation in thinking, a new vision, which spread throughout the country, with over 300 locally managed areas in Fiji by 2020, when COVID hit. The movement also spread to Samoa and Vanuatu and all over.

Now we have coral-focused adaptation strategies which can add resilience and functionality to these same tabu areas, which otherwise face the death of their coral populations. This will put the local communities in the forefront of saving the planet's coral reefs from climate change, with positive impacts on food security and marine biodiversity. "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth."

I'm heading back to Leleuvia today with the new camera (these German Rollei Go-pro clones are only $150. USD!) This is to record the interesting preliminary results of experiments to use simple methods to get super algae into bleached corals!

Vinaka with Warm Regards,

Austin

Hearty Fijian dish for divers

Divers beside palm in paradise

International Corals Workshop in 2019

Austin descends to reef table

Links:

Permalink

Mar 23, 2023
Cyclones Help Mitigate Another Fiji Mass Coral Bleaching Event

By Austin Bowden-Kerby, PhD | Program Scientist

Bleached corals of the lagoon reefs

Bula to the our "Reefs of Hope" supporters and donors around the world.

Super Cyclone Kevin, condition 4, passed south of Fiji, and brought very windy and rainy weather, which cooled off the western waters of Fiji. Cyclone Judy also cooled the waters the week before. However, it was too little too late for eastern Fiji and Tonga as the bleaching is severe in those areas. While we say a thank you: "vinaka vakalevu" to cyclones Kevin and Judy for cooling Fiji's waters, we are saddened about the badly damaged communities of Vanuatu.

Our main Malolo sites are now only at warning level, and will not likely bleach this year, thankfully buying us more time to complete the set up of experiments. In late December and early January, scattered bleaching occurred, which was rather alarming, as it was only at the warning stage and not yet fully into tropical summer. Luckily, cooler and rainy weather moved in which enabled the corals to recover.

Minor bleaching stress like this has been shown to help corals acclimate and adapt to warmer waters over time.... adjusting their algae, and replacing them with stronger strains, as long as it is not so severe as to cause coral death. Our working hypothesis is that we can encourage the sharing of heat resistant algae from resistant to less resistant corals, by moving the heat adapted (hot pocket) corals out to cooler reef areas and planting them among the cooler adapted corals in secure nurseries. For Malolo reefs, that proof of concept will have to wait another year or so.

However, for our Moturiki sites in the east, the bleaching is quite severe, with 99% of all Acropora corals are now badly bleached. This is our area of intensive focus for the next few weeks. We are using the bleaching event to more clearly identify and collect bleaching resistant corals. We have just returned from the badly impacted Leleuvia and Moturiki reefs in our new project boat, operated by our newly trained and certified Fijian captain! We worked hard to collect samples from the very few unbleached corals from the bleached coral populations. We are working with the villages of Daku and Uluibau, and both villages have restored their no-fishing Tabu areas, with Fisheries providing marking buoys, and we at C4C providing the ropes and anchors. The last week of March we will return for another week of intense collecting and community training, with the goal of using the "super corals" for reinforcing the no-take areas and building resilience to future bleaching events. The strategies we are using were published in a scientific publication by the project scientist in January, available online for those interested: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-1924/4/1/2/pdf

This ranks as Fiji's third worst stress event. Sadly, for the eastern reefs of the Lau group, this appears to be the worst bleaching there in recorded history, which will impact all of Fiji, as that area is where we get much of our coral larvae from during normal years. Fewer coral larvae will mean delayed coral reef recovery. This makes what we do: identifying bleaching resistant corals of the most vulnerable species, and securing them within protected reef sites, all the more important!

As Corals for Conservation's one-year UNEP grant comes to an end in May, GlobalGiving will once again become our only source of project funds. There has been much rejoicing here that GlobalGiving's $10,000 bonus from our DIY matching campaign will be disbursed in April.

You responded to the appeal and made this happen! Thanks for your continued support, especially now when parts of the coral ecosystem are tetering and need extra help from us and their communities to thrive again!

Austin

PS: The April 2023 Little by Little Campaign from April 3-7 is designed to help GlobalGiving partners around the world cultivate a robust network of small-dollar donors. All eligible donations up to $50 per unique donor per organization will be matched at 50% during the campaign, and funds will not run out!

Bleached staghorn corals of the hot lagoon

Some are bleaching resistant super corals

Outer reef coral bleaching

Captain Wilson on left piloting our new boat

Malolo Nursery in January during heat stress.

Links:

22 minute summary of our climate change adaptation strategies

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... 15 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.