[Coral-List] Media hyperbole in Coral Science

Coral Morphologic coralmorphologic at gmail.com
Tue May 19 21:41:58 UTC 2020


Steve,

Not to beat a dead horse, but to restate, we are mostly in agreement. I
agree that as scientists we should always reserve a certain amount of
skepticism to any groundbreaking advances until an experiment and its
results can be repeated by others. But I think that where we disagree is
that you suggest that coral scientists should be shouldering blame for any
coral optimism presented in science news media. Disagreements are fine, and
can actually advance scientific research, but what frustrates me is the
lack of any solutions you might propose as to how we can more accurately
present both the positive AND negative news on corals to the public.

It seems I frequently see late career coral scientists casting shade on
coral reproduction or restoration work. From the best I can gather, their
stance is that there can be no hope for coral reefs without urgent action
on climate change. Yet, I don't think there is a single coral scientist
that disagrees with the sentiment that global warming is the overarching
existential threat to reefs worldwide. But that is hardly the only problem
reefs face, and the closer you get to a local, reef-scale analysis of these
problems, it becomes apparent there are other issues that are even more
urgent and/or destructive at work.

I have spent most of my career diving on the reefs of the Florida Keys, and
the decline that I've seen, just in the past 2 decades (so 2 decades out
from the first Acropora die-offs of the late 1970's), is more than
alarming; it is absolutely depressing. But to say that the corals of the
Florida Keys have declined primarily from global warming wouldn't be
accurate, and to say that in the media would be just as ill-intentioned as
saying that coral restoration is a panacea. I don't think anyone is saying
restoration is a complete panacea as you seem to suggest they are.

I think we can all agree, including the people putting sweat, blood, and
tears into maintaining these restoration coral nurseries, that it would be
foolish to keep outplanting corals if they immediately started to die. This
is still a new branch of coral science, and we are bound to learn some hard
lessons along the way, but to abandon the concept of coral restoration and
reproduction is absolutely foolish in my opinion. I don't see many
scientists eager to keep up with such a Sisyphean task of watching their
outplanted babies die every couple years. In the light of the most recent
research you alluded to, it should hopefully shift the priorities, places,
and goals of these out-planting programs... not end them.

Something I think about frequently is the corollary with the wildfires that
we are seeing increase with alarming scale and intensity around the world.
But do we hear scientists in the media saying 'we shouldn't be replanting
more trees until we get global warming figured out?' No, we do not. But
when it comes to corals, it seems we do.

Beyond producing fragments for simple transplantation to 'restore a reef'
through asexual fragmentation, I see the deeper benefits of coral
restoration/nurseries to include:

1) The aggregation of a number of genotypes of a coral species in one small
nursery location such that when broadcast spawning occurs, it maximizes the
generation of new, and hopefully more resilient coral genotypes naturally
adapted to current conditions on nearby reefs. This is a passive and
natural form of coral restoration that requires no active
transplantation, only nursery maintenance.

2) Engaging dive tourists to be more mindful of living corals and their
impacts on them. It puts these divers in more controlled nursery settings.
Certainly this is a far more responsible activity than sending cattle boats
of tourists overboard to kick and damage natural reefs. If there is a
natural reef on Earth that has benefited from pure dive tourism (not
including restoration/transplantation initiatives), I would love to know
about it. In my experience, divers don't help improve the health of reefs
unless they are offsetting their carbon footprint and literal fin-prints,
by planting corals and supporting local restoration science initiatives
with their patronage. When it comes to scuba diving, I see the rush to 'see
it before the *other* tourists ruin it' attitude all over the place,
whether that is in West Papua or Cuba. Scuba diving and coral science is
frequently rife with this type of elitism (i.e. getting to go to places
'normal' tourists don't), which we should avoid at all costs.

3) Creating a place for coral scientists to work and study these corals.
Even if the outplanted corals are dying, we can still learn from these
failures. I would bet 90% of science is failure, and that is ok! By
learning from our mistakes, and the past work of others, we can hopefully
avoid repeating them.

When I was a young, naive freshmen just starting my degree in marine
biology in the year 2000, I came to Miami already primed with the
experience of growing corals as a hobbyist in my bedroom. I was shocked to
find that my professors thought that corals were not only 'impossible to
keep alive in aquaria' for any meaningful length of time, but considered
doing so to be a form of animal abuse, like keeping orcas in captivity. I
was shocked at their ignorance. At the time, it seemed the primary focus in
coral science was on researching 'how corals die', rather than 'how can we
grow and reproduce corals'. It is, after all, much easier to kill a coral,
than it is to grow one.

Thankfully, the enthusiasm, success, (and multiple failures) of hobbyists
enabled the transfer of vast amounts of aquacultural knowledge that
directly lead to the formation of the Coral Restoration Foundation, as well
as the more recent breakthroughs in closing the life cycles of many coral
species in controlled aquaria (which lead to the news articles that
inspired the conversation we are now having). We should not take these
advances for granted! They are worth writing about in local, national, and
international news outlets! 20 years ago many said it couldn't be done!!!

Compare the developments in coral reproduction over the past 20 years, to
that of our understanding about the causative agents of coral disease? Is
black band disease significantly more understood today than it was 20 years
ago? Can we 'cure it' yet?

I was one of the first people to observe and report what is now referred to
as SCTLD while transplanting corals during the Deep Dredge here in Miami in
2014. Has there been another coral disease whose origin in time and space
can be so precisely pinpointed? 6 years has passed, and how close are we to
understanding and controlling it? It seems like it is spreading like
wildfire across the massive stony coral populations of the Caribbean (just
as Acropora diseases did 40 years earlier, also starting in Florida).
Absolutely depressing stuff to think about.

I take heart in seeing restoration progress from Belize where dedicated
people have worked to significantly increase coral coverage on at least
some of the reefs there over the past decade. Do we choose to ignore these
successes in the face of more ugly failures? Or do we work harder,
stress-hardening the corals as much as ourselves?

Besides curbing our carbon emissions to reduce the impact of global
warming, is there anything we can do as individual scientists to slow the
rate of coral decline? Trying to locate resilient genotypes and symbionts
seems like the logical thing to do, as many now are. After more than 20
years of research being conducted on 'Tenacious D' (another questionable
attempt at making coral science 'relatable' to pop culture through the
rehashing of a cringe-worthy GenX dick joke) Symbiodinium (now Durusdinium
trenchii), it no longer seems like the silver bullet that will save corals
from global warming as it was once hyped up to be. But before scientists
figured out how to generate new corals sexually, plenty of media was given
to this 'nugget of hope'.

And yet, just as reefs can be dying of hundred cuts, we can also help
prolong their lives through a series of small gestures accumulating
meaningfully. While it would be great if all corals born this year could
live to be over 100 years old, with a new human-coral symbiosis in the
Anthropocene, we might have to settle for them to 'live just long enough to
spawn at least once' in hopes that real world selection will generate a
level of adaptation and evolution that will get them to produce the next
generation. Just to be safe, we should be culturing as much coral
biodiversity in aquaria as possible. Maybe there is some other breakthrough
awaiting us 5, 10, 20, 50 years in the future. We must have hope, or else
there is no reason to try.

20 years ago scientists (and much of the public) already knew fully well
that global warming was the primary existential threat to coral reefs. To
lay blame on the next generation of coral scientists in 2020 for not
turning the tide of public opinion on the matter is, in my opinion, unfair.
We are all in this fish bowl together. I get frustrated when I see (usually
older, white male academic scientists btw) who want to have the loudest
voice in the room, and castigate the failures of global reef health onto
others (often the junior scientists that are focusing their work on the
developing fields of coral reproduction/restoration). The problem I have
with this attitude is that I don't see any realistic solutions to their
frustrations other than 'quit coral science and become a climate
activist/lobbyist'. I mean, sure, if you start with the logic that the only
way to save a coral reef is to stop global warming, then unlocking the
secrets of coral reproduction would appear to be for naught. But
encouraging a cohort of young scientists/students to leave coral science to
become propaganda artists for climate activism is not an acceptable
solution in my eyes. It kinda sounds just like old men complaining about
the youth, which is nothing new, or helpful. Fortunately the youth are
pretty good at multimedia multi-tasking, and it turns out that it is
possible to do both science and social media!

As mentioned previously, corals face a variety of problems on the local
scale that are independent of warming (but still definitely related to
anthropogenic activity). To advocate against pursuing research on
growing/reproducing corals by arking them in places (in labs or underwater
nurseries) where scientists can advance work that can't otherwise be easily
done on a wild reef, is foolish at best, and arrogantly selfish at worst.
There should be no heroic pride in being the guy who sees smoke and calls
the fire department in hopes of being recognized as the hero. It is the
firefighters that answer that call, going into harms way despite knowing
that structures and human lives will be lost without their selflessness,
that are the real heroes.

These days scientists (and many outside of science) are put in a real bind.
A catch 2020 if you will. On the one hand they need to make their work
stand apart from their peers'. The 'publish or perish' paradigm of academia
generates a lot of competition as the methods and results of each
others' research is picked apart in peer review. Creative media outreach is
one such way we have seen the public become engaged with work and species
that might not ever make it onto the pop cultural radar. Not long ago I
read a list of 'top new animal species discovered in 2019', and if I recall
the #1 was a wrasse named after a fictional place in a Marvel comic.
Depending on the 'purity' of one's academic attitude, this can be seen as
either a 'dumbing down' of academia, or it can be seen as a creative way to
get young people excited about the fact that there are still untold numbers
of undescribed species still waiting to be discovered (so become a
scientist!).

Hobbyists have been using comic book and sports teams to describe the
phenotypic differences of coral species for at least the past 2 decades
(for instance, Incredible Hulk = neon green morph, Superman = red and blue
morph, LA Lakers= yellow and purple morph, Darth Maul = red and black
morph). I've been around long enough to watch some academic purists snicker
at how 'unscientific' these colorful coral names were. But it's 2020 and
all the old rules are out the window. Are not baby steps, even in the face
of impending doom, still progress?

Humanity itself probably emerged from the recognition of our impending
doom... and the desire to communicate those complicated feelings to others.
Language, self-consciousness, and the development of empathy is what we
like to think sets humans apart from other living things. Over the past
several hundred years, science has been used as a cutting-edge vehicle to
explain the who, what, where, and how of our confusing existence. At one
point this was heretical. And even to this day a certain level of smugness
about being an academic can still be seen. It is based on the idea that
those with higher levels of schooling are somehow intellectually superior
to the unschooled. This is a dangerous and unhelpful attitude to have, and
in many ways has only further driven a wedge between the 'commons' and the
academics. We need only look at the attitudes people have toward science as
it relates to the very real, but invisible, infectious disease we are all
currently dealing with.

This a very dangerous time for humanity. We are at a crossroads. Global
warming is still a major existential threat (excluding cosmic events, which
have been, and still are, the biggest threat to life on our planet). The
acquisition of knowledge has almost always been seen as a threat to power.
I can only hope that we as scientists can take a step back from the
microscope and zoom out to see the bigger picture. In-fighting and finger
pointing isn't going to help. In an 'all hands on deck' situation, the
only question worth asking is "What can I do to help?".

Do we march forward with righteous smug superiority, blaming the downfall
of the world on the 'uneducated'? I hope we don't. Or instead, can we craft
a more inclusive world where curiosity is rewarded, mistakes are seen as
learning experiences, and inclusivity is embraced? That's the dream I
embrace.

Cheers,
Colin
Coral Morphologic <http://www.coralmorphologic.com>
Coral City Camera   <http://www.coralcitycamera.com>


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