Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 54
CO M M UNIC AT IO N
RE W I L D I NG
ONSERVATION CAN BE COMPLEX ,
controversial, and polarizing. But it can also
bring together different people from very diverse backgrounds who all want to
make a difference.
Jim Ritterhoff knows this to be true: As the leader
of Force Blue, a marine conservation nonprofit that
employs ex-Special Operations soldiers, he believes
conservation work can serve a higher, human good
beyond just rewilding an island, or restoring a species
to health. “I feel like we have a crisis of belonging in the
world right now,” Ritterhoff says.
We sat down recently with Ritterhoff, Shanna Challenger, and Laura-Li Jeannot. Challenger is part of the
Environmental Awareness Group and is a conservation biologist from Antigua and Barbuda. Her work
focuses on protecting endangered species and rewilding these islands. Jeannot, of Lancaster University, is a
Ph.D. researcher aiming to understand how variations
in seabird-derived nutrients have an impact on critically understudied fish communities.
Together, they talked about why tents can be essential tools for marine conservation, and how rewilding
work can inspire even the most unlikely partners.
algaes and corals, and even feed the fish, promoting
growth and recovery after disturbances and keeping
the reef systems healthy.
But unfortunately, in some of the Chagos Islands,
there are invasive species. Rats are perhaps the most
invasive species in that they practically destroy the
ecosystem they enter into. They eat the seabird chicks,
the eggs, and sometimes even the adult birds. Another
threat to the seabirds on some of the islands is habitat
destruction, and on tropical islands that often means
coconut plantations. It might look like a beautiful view
to us, but to a seabird it’s a nightmare to try and roost
and build a nest in these trees.
So how does all of this impact the coral reef fish?
Jeannot: Right, let’s go back to the fish. The fish benefit
from seabird nutrients. But there’s a special category of
fish I want to talk about, and that’s cryptobenthic fish.
“Crypto” means cryptic, so that means they are hidden
away and difficult to see, and then “benthic” comes from
benthos, which means the seafloor. So that’s what they
are: Little tiny fish that hide in the corals on the seafloor,
among the coral crevices and trenches and in tiny holes.
Aside from their small size, they have another trait in
common which is that they live very fast. They are very
tiny, very unassuming, and almost transparent, and they
hold the world record for the shortest lived vertebrate
on Earth. They live about two months, during which they
hatch from their egg, find a mate, reproduce, lay their
eggs, and die. These fish are the fuel of coral reef systems.
What happens to these fish determines what happens to
the coral reef community.
One of the few things we know about cryptobenthic
fish is that they are very sensitive to local environmental changes, including the nutrients they receive and in
particular, seabird nutrients. In my work, we’re trying
to determine how seabird nutrients and changes in
Laura-Li Jeannot, can you tell us a little bit about
your work?
Laura-Li Jeannot: I’m a second year Ph.D. student
and an early career scientist. That gives me the advantage of diving into the topics that interest me the
most, and one of these topics is coral reef fish. I was
always fascinated by their complexity, beauty, unique
role in ecosystems, and the people that depend on
them. In my work, I’m looking at the Chagos Archipelago, which is in the Indian Ocean, and on some of
the islands you have uniquely dense populations of
seabirds that congregate there. And they are thriving.
They build nests, they raise chicks, lay their eggs, and
produce massive amounts of guano. And this guano is
full of nutrients that make their way to soils, to plants,
and more unexpectedly perhaps, into the marine environments. There, these nutrients serve to fertilize the
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