Today we did a 2 tank dive trip in the morning and stingray city in the afternoon. The first dive we did at a site called big tunnels was absolutely amazing with coral mountains that dropped down to 4000 ft, and I have to say it was the best dive I’ve had in my life. However I do not really want to talk about how amazing this first dive was because I think it is a waste of time. What I really want to do is call people’s attention to threat that faces our coral reefs today which was very apparent on the second dive. On our second dive at a site called Park Place the reef was still very healthy, but what I noticed at the shallow depth was more dead coral and bleached coral than had been at the deeper big tunnels. Corals such as a boulder star coral which can be identified by its sheer size and mountain like appearance made of individual polyps and green hue I could see were starting to die if not already dead. The same thing can be said about staghorn coral as bleached and dead staghorn could be strewn about. The cause of all this…warming oceans; there is no other way this could possibly happen and it is 100% humans fault. Now because of the way I think, I don’t think all hope is lost and if you want to get people aware and take action, just saying the coral is all dead is not much of a motivater. Instead I want to offer a solution for what I saw on the reef today. Organisms are built to adapt to new environments and changing conditions and this is not exception for corals. On the reef today among the bleached and dead hard corals I saw some that were completely healthy and were able to survive warming temperatures. My proposal is to take samples of these corals and setup a few aquariums to grow pieces of coral from what are called frags or small bits of coral cut off. Once the corals have grown a bit, run some experiments in fishtanks keeping the salinity, pH, and amount of light the same but raise the temperature to where corals typically start bleaching. Monitor the corals and look for samples that continue to live and stay healthy despite the rising temperature. Because the corals are able to survive rising temperature, they could possibly have some sort of adaptation that makes them resistant to heat, and if we could find a way to put these “super corals” back on the reef in a big scale operation its possible to maybe repopulate hard coral populations and make sure they stay as the temperature rises. How we as humans could get the money and a technique to plant these corals on the reef in mass quantities I don’t know. But if we are capable of putting and man on the moon or making bombs that can wipeout entire cities it does not seem that farfetched. To clarify I have not tested this idea or have begun any actual work on it. These are just ideas from things I have read online, learned in class, and know from experience. If this ideas don’t work, I still believe there is other solutions and I will continue to monitor the reefs here in the Caymans and brainstorm new solutions to changes happening to our reefs here in the Cayman Islands and around the world a hope that one of them might just work.
-Henry Hallam 2019
