Climate Action Fiji Project #21872

Emergency Response to Mass Coral Bleaching

by Corals for Conservation

Emergency Response to Mass Coral Bleaching

Project Report | Oct 11, 2021
Unrelenting Emergency for Corals: Lessons Learned

By Austin Bowden-Kerby, PhD | Corals for Conservation Scientist

Planting heat adapted corals for the nursery

I begin with the powerful visual of NOAA graph which show we are further over the cliff than most of us realize. Kiritimati (Christmas Island) was the most intensive ocean temperatures of anywhere in history it seems, although only for ten months. This is not surprising, since the area lies directly on the equator. Kiribati is now clearly the leading edge in what is predicted to be the collapse of coral reefs globally from climate change. Kiribati is therefore the place to learn as many lessons as possible in our race to help prevent this mass die off of corals on other reefs globally.

Thanks to all of our donors for bringing our shared concern for the health and the future of coral reefs to the forefront by donating your time and dollars. In the news phrases appear like: the hottest July ever recorded, rain falling in Greenland where formerly snow only was seen, Antarctica's iceshelf rapidly melting--so much so that the fresh water is weakening ocean currents, and mention of an astounding heatwave in Siberia. What's next? Yes, some glimpses of the future stresses upon the earth are already visible, like receding glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas exposing bare ground and ultimately taking away the water resource for many peoples.

Yet corals are painted in a softer pallet and they lie beneath the surface where most people can't observe critical changes. Formerly common corals have become rare and even locally extinct, depriving colorful reef fish of homes and impacting indigenous communities which survive by grace off the coral reef.

Backstory of Corals Endangered from Bleaching

Over five years ago, I reached out to you in the face of an unpredented coral bleaching emergency. Here we are years later with more coral gardeners toiling earnestly around the globe, but emergency is still in the title--the state of urgency has not been alleviated.

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Searching for super corals among the dead corals

The story of Kiribati and the 2015-2016 mass bleaching is where we started, and where scientists are learning what the future might be and how to better preserve reef diversity. The saddest part of the tale is had we only known the waters would be so hot as to cause fish die-offs, then we could have moved precious corals to cooler, deeper areas. Now that lesson is learned, and with your help, the fight continues to do just that--acting the sooner the better to protect and preserve threatened coral beds.

With Larval Dispersal Compromised, Reefs need Help to Reproduce

Many species of Acropora corals have been lost from the Line Islands, Kiribati, since the 2016 severe ten-month mass bleaching event, the most intense bleaching event ever recorded in the NOAA data series. With no reefs directly upcurrent, where larvae might recruit from, these locally

extinct species have little chance of returning unassisted- within my lifetime at least. Surviving remnants are so few and far apart that sexual reproduction has obviously failed. Could a similar problem be emerging for other reefs globally, especially at the fringes of present coral

distribution, and for reefs likewise isolated from upcurrent coral larval sources?

Of the Acropora species originally found on Kiritimati (Christmas) Atoll, after several years of searching, we have found a total of 5 acropora species persisting, out of 13 original species. Two of the Acropora species, *A. globiceps* and *A. retusa*, have in recent years been recognized and listed as threatened corals internationally.

Second Generation Fragments Replanted into Multi-Genetic Patches

We have collected samples of all the surviving Acropora species that could be found on the atoll, however only a few genotypes are available for some species. Using the sampled fragments, we have created a coral nursery in a sheltered area with good water flow. Adult colonies now are growing and likely spawning seasonally in the nursery, and second generation fragments have also been replanted into multi-genetic patches on the reef, in hopes of re-booting successful spawning and natural recovery processes. We predict that these survivors are more bleaching resistant than those corals which died. The Kiritimati case study is included as chapter 17 of the new book, "Active Coral Restoration, Techniques for a Changing Planet", edited
by Dr. David Vaughn.

Measure Success by Securing Diversity and Resilience

In the new climate change realities that we now face, I believe that coral reef restoration must become more focused on endangered species recovery and on nurturing bleaching resistance and disease resistance among diverse corals, as well as restoring sexual reproduction, so that natural adaptive
processes are encouraged. Rather than "upscaling" restoration based on the numbers of fragments planted per square meter, I think we should measure success based on securing diversity and resilience within declining or threatened coral species, helping secure and restore reproductive and ecologically functioning coral populations, which in turn facilitate
natural recovery processes. We can not replant the whole reef, and we must ask ourselves if what we replant today will survive a rapidly warming world? Are we imposing a technology on the reef system that will increase coral cover now, but that is ultimately doomed when mass bleaching hits, or are we working to increase bleaching resistance within the coral population that will hopefully spread, buying us precious time, while the world
struggles to bring climate change under control?

Lesson Learned: Move Coral Samples to Cooler Waters Now

Most importantly, I think that we now need to invest energy into ensuring long term survival of our most resilient coral populations, which may already exist at the upper limit of thermal tolerance. Unfortunately, Kiribati shows us that these most resistant corals are just as vulnerable
to mass bleaching events, as the shallow lagoon waters can become superheated and exceed the maximum heat threshold of all corals. If we had only gotten to Kiritimati Atoll before the bleaching induced mass die-off in 2015-16, we might have saved multiple genotypes of the most resistant corals of the lagoon from local extinction- simply by moving coral samples
out to cooler waters near the passes and establishing them within nurseries. But alas, the entire population of bleaching resistant corals died out when the water became so hot that even the fish died. Just imagine a large lagoon covered in thickets of dead and standing staghorn and massive corals- all we could find alive after a day of searching was one small colony of foliose Montipora.

Race Against Time in Fiji: Capitalize on Time-Sensitive Opportunity
Learning from this tragedy, in Fiji we now focus on identifying hot pockets on the reef and inshore that are near the upper limit of thermal tolerance, and sampling those corals, moving them out to cooler water nurseries where even in severe condition two bleaching, temperatures will never go above the threshold for these specific corals. But this is a race against time, and ours is only a tiny effort when compared to the scale of the reefs and the numbers of nearshore and shallow lagoon hot pockets in Fiji, the region, and globally.  Unless this is recognized as a time sensitive opportunity, within a decade, most of these heat adapted coral populations will be gone.

Even if we can solve the climate crisis with massive changes in production and consumption, unless coral restoration efforts can begin to visualize conditions 10-20 or even 30 years into the future, will they succeed? Based on clear trends, many of the Acropora species that we are working with now will likely be the first to go, becoming threatened species or locally extinct in our lifetimes.  Right now, we continue to have a range of species and genotypes with broad thermal and disease tolerances to work with.  But as the die-offs arrive, unless heat adapted corals that are
presently living near their upper thermal limits are secured, we stand to lose much of this diversity of resilience that is so important to long term coral reef survival.

Our team of volunteers, lead by Indigenous marine biologists, Sara Makutu and Merekeleni Tinai are in the field, at our Plantation Island Resort partnership site, working hard six days a week to carry forward the work to create a model coral reef adaptation for climate change site (recent photos attached). We will welcome self-funded researchers and students to join us in our sites, once the planes start flying again in this region--maybe this November?  For those searching for a topic along the lines of ecological restoration or facilitated adaptation, we have a long list of research questions that might help pin down a research topic of global relevance.

For all of you who labor and give to sustain corals, you merit the thanks of our shared planet,

Vinaka,

Austin

October team over a gene bank nursery

Overgrown nursery prior to trimming

Nuku reef, our most pristine remaining site

One of many new restoration sites

Trimmed heat-resistant corals for out-planting

Our Fiji model site for coral reef adaptation!

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Jun 11, 2021
The COVID Crisis Hits Fiji, But the Work Goes On!

By Austin Bowden-Kerby | Project Scientist, and defender of the corals

Mangrove Planting Activity May 2021

Fiji Faces the Challenges of a new Super-Spreader Strain

Bula everyone,

Fiji is now in the midst of a major crisis. Over a year ago all tourism stopped and we have had severe economic consequences and unemployment. However we had a full year of no community spread of the virus, and we could move freely around the country without masks. Yes, a few cases were intercepted effectively at the border as all arrivals enter a two-week quarantine in a facility. However, the new super-spreader strain (B1.617.2) of COVID-19 jumped right over the vaccine and quarantine, and now over 800 people have been infected in many communities. The last week we have had betwen 33 and 94 new cases per day.

Two New Coral Nurseries Planted and Dozens of Fish-house Structures Deployed

In spite of the challenges, our C4C team, consisting of our coral gardener Merekeleni, and five volunteers, is at the field sties, housed at the now closed Plantation Island Resort. They have been there over-time for the past five weeks now due to the lock downs, separated from their families. The team, under Keleni's guidance, has carried out a tremendous amount of work; removing COTS, creating new coral nurseries in two areas, creating and deploying dozens of fish-house structures planted with heat adapted corals taken from extremly shallow hot pockets, planting mangroves and cleaning the beach when the waves were too big to go out, or when the team was just feeling too water-logged! Plantation island Resort has been very gracious to host the team, providing accommodation, food, and boats! The major trimming and outplanting planned for this month has been postponed, but we hope to do that in July or August, as we hopefully are able to rotate a new team in and also get Austin, the team scientists back in from the main island, where he has been stuck in the lockdowns. During that time, we hope to create at least one new nursery and several putplanting sites with our second generation heat adapted corals trimmed from the existing nurseries, to establish known bleaching resistant and bleaching sensitive corals on both cooler outer reefs and hotter inner reefs (see map). With the additional nurseries and our temperature loggers in place, we will then be well prepared for the next bleaching even and to finally prove that our strategy of moving corals from hot inner reefs to cooler outer reefs is effective at combating climate change and coral reef demise. Moving corals locally will help prevent the demise of the bleaching resistant corals, as the habitats they presently live in may become too hot for any corals to survive, while the outer reefs will not get as hot. Unfortunately the cooler adpated corals of the outer reef may die out, leaving only the pockets of heat adapted corals that we have planted.

Temperature Loggers Capable of Recording Data for Five Years Have Arrived!

We have finally received twenty Hobo recording temperature loggers, which we will soon be able to deploy throughout the site to map the temperatures over time. The loggers will record the water temperature every 30 minutes for at least five years. We also plan to send some to Kiribati and Tuvalu for the coral nurseries there, to be depolyed by our partners, once the mail service is restored.

Raising the Alarm - the Coral Reefs of Kiribati as the Most Impacted on the Planet!

Im May, I drafted a report on the repeated mass bleaching and death of the coral reefs of Kiribati, and submitted it to the Kiribati Ambassador to the UN, Mr Teburoro Tito, and he has forwarded the report to key members of his government. The coral reefs of Kiribati are over 90% dead now, directly due to hot water bleaching, and noone seems to have noticed! Included in my report is a proposed action plan based on our successful Christmas Atoll, Kiribati project, which has now been published as a chapter in a new book on coral restoration.

Progress has been made on the website, and the BBC TV nine-minute film "The Coral Gardener" has been uploaded and can now be accessed on the website. www.corals4conservation.org

Super Donors are Saving Super Corals

In Fiji we have super corals and unbelievably beautiful reefs still persist, and we send a super thank you to our super donors! We are receiving donations in Euros, Pounds, US, New Zealand, Australian, and Canadian dollars, etc, and we are also privileged to be chosen by key GlobalGiving corporate partners who sponsor gift cards. Vinaka vakalevu (abundant thanks) to everyone who has donated and/or who has shared our reports and links, as our web of friends is widening.

The Coral Gardening Team Planting Mangroves

Coral Gardening Team Removing Coral-Killing COTS

Mamanuca Restoration Sites and Planned Sites

Austin and Grandson Kiki Unpacking the Loggers!

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Feb 11, 2021
In the COVID-19 Free South Pacific, the Work to Save Coral Reefs Intensifies

By Austin Bowden-Kerby | Project Scientist, and defender of the corals

Volunteers do a lot of work but also have fun!

EXCITING NEWS! Our project has been selected as one of only six case study sites for coral reef restoration by the United Nations, with our project taking up five pages out of a 45-page globally significant UNEP document! Our full Kiribati report has also been updated and selected for publication as a chapter in a book on coral reef restoration.

While the Global pandemic has changed so many things, here in Fiji and much of the South Pacific there is no community spread of the virus at all, and so we can move about as always. However, with no air travel and all commercial flights cancelled, it is still impossible to travel to Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Samoa, and so follow up trips planned for our sites there have not been possible, but we continue to work with our local partner organizations via email. In the mean time, we have focused on the Fiji sites, with especially intensive work in the Malolo sites from September.

We have gone into the sites each month since then, with teams of ten volunteers for two-week rotations, supervised by our two professional coral gardeners, Sarah, Keleni, and myself. The volunteers are mostly unemployed graduates from the marine studies program at the university, living at home with their parents due to a greatly retracted economy, now that tourism is closed down. These young people are real gems. They have an excellent background, but are bored with the present situation at home, and thus thrilled and thankful to be out in the ocean again!

Surprise from Mother Nature: A String of Tropical Cyclones Cools the Waters & Averts Widespread Coral Bleaching.

We have focused on preparing the reefs and coral nurseries for a predicted mass coral bleaching and mass death event, that was expected to hit starting this month (February), in the heart of our southern hemisphere summer. Water temperatures have reached 33C (>90F), at times in our bleaching resistant coral nurseries. Howevre, in a dynamic turn of weather trends, four cyclones hit Fiji in sequence since November, brushing past our sites (no direct hits), and cooling off the waters, so that only a minor bleaching has emerged so far.

Coral Saving Strategy has Crown of Thorns Starfish Relinquishing Killer Hold on Reefs

Our primary strategy has been to remove the venomous, coral killing, Crown of Thorns starfish (COTS), which have infested parts of our reefs, with intense focus in our planned coral outplanting and restoration sites. We can not replant corals unless and until these animals are under better control, otherwise we are just feeding the problem.

After removing hundreds of COTS from four targeted reefs, it is finally becoming harder to find them, as their abundance is much lower. After two more months of mop-up operations, we will be ready in May to commence with the out-planting of corals trimmed from the nurseries , when the waters begin to cool off again. The goal is to create sizable patches of bleaching resistant super corals on the reefs, corals that will grow into adult colonies and begin to spawn, sending their babies onto the wider reef system. This plan will test the idea that these corals share their heat adapted super-algae with nearby corals and incoming coral larvae, helping them to also become bleaching resistant. Our prediction is that the bleaching resistant reef patches will increase in size and diversity over time, and that the downcurrent coral populations will become more resistant, as the resistant corals spawn and send their larvae and algae into the wider reef system.

In these times of great heat stress, the corals should not be fragmented for planting, as that added stress can lead to their death. As an alternative strategy, entire colonies can be moved, if kept in the same upright orientation. Therefore, we successfully collected more super coral candidates from the hot pocket reefs and we moved one entire coral nursery of over 80 large mother corals from an extreme hot pocket into cooler waters.

Local-focused Partnerships with Tuvalu and Kiribati Youth for Environmental Restoration and Food Source Alternatives to Overfishing

The Tuvalu youth group that we work with has sent a wonderful report and photos showing their work removing tons of invasive seaweeds that have smothered the corals, using the sargassum seaweed as fertilizer in their sweet potato gardens. Weeding of the invasive seaweeds from around the few remaining corals in the town area is creating clean bare rock, which will receive corals trimmed from the super coral nurseries. This coral planting can occur after the third removal is completed, ensuring that the seaweeds are killed out in the restoration patches before the coral work begins.

The Kiribati nursery corals continue to thrive under the care of our local partners, who have recently sent photos of the nursery. The over-abundant parrotfish continue to suppress the coral growth in the nursery, normally a problem, but at this time the slower growth has helped ensure that the nursery is kept manageable, with the corals we trimmed last March regrowing slowly and not fighting with their neighbors. The planned creation of two new nurseries in areas with fewer parrotfish is on hold for now. The efforts we took in teaching alternate food sources in this import-dependent community: sweet potatoes, edible banana flowers and stems, wild greens, and edible seaweeds, has proven very useful, as imports have become harder to obtain, with a major slowdown in shipping and total stoppage of air freight due to the pandemic.

Unfortunately, we have not been able to follow up with the work in our partnership site on Moorea, in French Polynesia, with the "Coral Gardeners" youth-driven NGO. Even with flights inward possible, a COVID epidemic has ravaged the islands, as they have continued to allow tourists in.

Livelihood Workshops for Reef Dependent Communities, Seaweed and Giant Clam Farming, and Disaster Relief Shifts into High Gear with our Experienced Corals for Conservation Officer.

Back in Fiji, a livelihoods workshop for reef dependent communities is going on right now at our Teitei Livelihoods Centre, and our Naidiri coral restoration site is well represented. Our community officer Simione Koto is missing, as he is off to the north of Fiji, to Vanua Levu island, to assist with cyclone relief and channeling disaster aid sent to us through GlobalGiving. He is also following up on prospects for new coral restoration sites there in the two communities we are assisting. The government has almost no aid for the communities, only a week of food rations, and no material support whatsoever, as the tax base of the nation has collapsed due to the closure of the tourism industry. We are distributing cyclone strapping, nails, and roofing screws to secure rafters, beams, and roofs, to many households, to strengthen what they manage to rebuild. The elderly and single mothers with devastated houses have been identified across the communities and are initial targets for urgent relief. With the shoring up housing, both the structures and the people who live in them will be able to survive in the next storm.

The Fiji Ministry of Fisheries sent four of their officers into our Mamanuca site and they are working with us on the farming of commercially valuable and edible seaweeds in the ocean as a potential community livelihood, well as the farming of overfished and endangered giant clam species, for restoration of the important species back to the reefs.

Volunteer and Intern Opportunity in Covid-19 Free Fiji for Families, and Students!

For individuals and families who read this who would like to come serve in Fiji as self-supporting volunteers, student interns, or scientific researchers in our coral reef and community development sites, we certainly could use your help. We recently met with Fiji Immigration and it is possible to bring people in through quarantine and on the weekly repatriation flight from LAX, as long as we get you a proper volunteer permit valid for one year. Marine biology, agriculture, natural resources management, and community development graduates worldwide who are passionate about community prosperity and preserving the coral reef ecosystem may find such an internship an amazing opportunity. You might reach out to your university to see if this would qualify for an individual study course. Otherwise the experience will be enriching and will help prepare you for a career in your field. Please send us an email if you are interested.

As always, we thank you for your support and your continued and sacrificial donations, none of this amazing progress would have been possibly without small donors like you. For those planning on donating again, coming soon is a matching and bonus opportunity in March from GlobalGiving- the "Little by Little" campaign, and again in April for Earth Week bonuses.

Vinaka vakalevu,

Austin

Tuvalu Invasive Seaweed Removal Project

Kiribati Coral Nursery January, 2021

Giant Clam Babies Arrive from Fisheries!

Seaweed Farming Trials Begin in the Fiji Sites!

Crown of Thorns Starfish Removed from Nuku Reef

Volunteers get a great experience and education.

Links:

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