[Coral-List] Ruth Gates

[Peter Sale]

Thank you, Doug Fenner, for alerting me to the article in The Atlantic on the passing of Ruth Gates. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/optimist-who-believed-saving-corals/574240/

I did not know Ruth Gates beyond meeting her at conferences, and my research field is quite distant from hers.  But I did see her passion and her optimism, as well as the apparent effectiveness with which she used these to influence others.  The Atlantic article is fascinating and far more than an obituary although it is clearly that.  It inextricably links her to corals and coral reefs, and her mortality to the story of reef decline.  I'm most struck by the tone of cautious optimism.

Ruth's passing reminds me that over the next decade or so, the world is going to lose a lot of coral reef scientists along with our memories of what reefs could be like in a Holocene ocean that no longer exists.  The risk is that the commitment to strive to retain functional coral reefs on this planet will wane as experience of what reefs really are disappears.  Working reef scientists will continue to document decline, while searching for ways to slow it down, long after functional reefs have left the scene.  I suggest we need to fight hard against this risk, prevent that 'dwindling away to extinction', and really motivate the world to act effectively on carbon pollution.  Not doing this will mean we have been complacent, or even complicit, in the human-driven removal of coral reef ecosystems from this planet.  Business as usual, even in the form of outstanding research and teaching, is definitely no longer acceptable.

Peter Sale
University of Windsor (Emeritas)