Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 38
are also pricey. He imagines developing coral reproduction and growth
systems out of low-cost materials like concrete or mud and bamboo and
using local labor and building skills. Craggs says. “I think these worlds,
working together, can achieve amazing things. The combination of science
and husbandry. That’s the secret to success.”
to Lancaster University’s Nick Graham, whose groundbreaking work on coral reefs has focused on what can
be learned in the field. “I’ve always been interested in trying to understand
how different parts of the ecosystem are joined up,” he says.
After earning his doctoral degree working in the Great Barrier Reef,
Graham served as an ichthyologist on several multi-institutional multidisciplinary research trips to the Chagos Archipelago. As part of a large
marine sanctuary in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the region has been
protected from fishing and mostly uninhabited by people since the 1970s.
That makes it home to some of the world’s most pristine marine habitats
and hailed as a key location for coral research.
Ornithologists Graham met on those trips pointed out that some islands
had dense seabird populations, and others almost none. The reason was
that hundreds of years ago, explorers inadvertently infested some of the
islands with rats. Those rats preyed on birds’ eggs and chicks. Around the
same time, native trees were razed for coconut palms, further decreasing
habitat for seabirds. Consequently, the abundance of seabirds was 760
COLLABORATIONS ARE ALSO KEY
36
TH E O CE A N AGENCY / O CEA N I MAG E BANK
SKY RESCUE Coral bleaching events are becoming more
frequent. Researchers found that
coral that’s near islands with intact
seabird populations recovered
from a bleaching event after eight
months—but coral without nearby
seabirds took 18 months.
