[Coral-List] Ocean Optimism and communication concerning the global environmental crisis

[sealab at earthlink.net]

Hi Peter,

You deserve to be praised, not slammed for raising legitimate concerns regarding the messaging of the coral science community. I know we have discussed this on-list a number of times before, but it calls out for continuous auditing because there has been little in the way of improvement.

Of course, coral scientists are well aware of the need to address major stressors. Almost every paper I read on restoration makes that abundantly clear and as you point out, it is primarily the non-scientists who are lacking the proper appreciation for the complexity and overall gravity of the situation at hand. But why is that? I would argue that too many restoration projects (most of which have some level of scientific oversight), simply do not prioritize and therefore trivialize the breadth of the problem. It is no wonder that the average person (non-scientist) comes away with the idea that we can restore coral reefs through outplanting alone for that is precisely what the messaging conveys.

As you said, we need committed researchers to be engaged in reef restoration and there are many projects that are worthy of praise, but we also need to be intolerant of those who are either purposely or inadvertently promoting misinformation by avoiding or simply downplaying the imperative need to adequately address water quality, over-fishing and the crucial issue of climate change.

Regards,

Steve Mussman

On 3/20/21, 12:33 AM, Peter Sale via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

Listers,

There is a healthy discussion going on around how best to communicate outside the science silo when talking about climate change or the wider environmental crisis, and many of us in the coral science community struggle with how best to deal with a lot of really bad news. The prevailing view at present seems to be, be optimistic at all costs. I fully support the need to convey some hope in our messaging, but I also fear the tendency to hype the trivial pieces of good news rather than address the full seriousness of the crisis we are causing. Within the reef science community there are now a number of seriously committed researchers/practitioners engaged in reef restoration. We need their efforts. It is also true at present that the vast majority of reef restoration projects involve the growing up and out-planting of nubbins of fast-growing Acroporids. Such species do not provide the framework of enduring reefs, and growing and out-planting of species likely to be bleached or hit

by disease does not seem fruitful as a solution to the big problem of reefs having lost 50% of their coral cover over a few short decades. Others are engaged in what I can only describe as techno-gimmicks - use of drones to disperse larval corals for example, or schemes to pump up cold water, or shade reef surfaces. Photogenic, innovative, suitably technological to impress those engineers who still believe we have dominion over the planet, but unlikely to be scalable to address the real problems.

I notice in talking to many non-scientists an amazing lack of appreciation of just how serious this crisis is, and I don't think they will become strong advocates for addressing the problems of GHG emissions or biodiversity loss until they appreciate just how bad the result of not acting is going to be. I'm also aware that most politicians are non-scientists, and politicians sometimes get to make the big decisions that are needed. Therefore I think we scientists have to talk about the seriousness of what we are doing to the planet. I fear our attempts at optimism often confuse the message we should be sending. We have to find a way of conveying hope without trivializing the problems before us. Although it does not address coral reefs explicitly, my latest blog post at http://www.petersalebooks.com/?p=3073 tries to set out just how badly the world is failing in dealing with the environmental crisis, and why I think people need to know how bad things are getting. Depending on how

badly I get slammed by you all for this comment, I can maybe follow up with some more thoughts on how to message honestly but in a hopeful, positive way.

Peter Sale

University of Windsor (Emeritus)

sale at uwindsor.ca www.petersalebooks.com

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