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Ken Nedimyer, founder of the Coral Restoration Foundation,
tends to staghorn corals, which will later be outplanted on
the reefs off Key Largo, Fla.
Below: Greater adoption of alternative energy sources such
as wind and solar may help mitigate the ocean acidification
and climate change associated with burning fossil fuels.
from about 200 to 2,000 between 1973 and 2012.
Manatees are showing similar improvement. Florida’s
manatee population has increased 500 percent since
the late 1960s, when they were first protected —
evidence that restoring natural habitats and imposing
speed limits on boats are having a positive effect.
Shark populations have also seen improvement
after the implementation of protections. The movie
Jaws led a generation of water lovers to fear these
majestic animals, while at the same time a fondness
for shark-fin soup caused their numbers to plummet.
While they still deserve our respect, they are now
also getting some of our love. Thanks to dive tourism,
sharks are worth a lot more money alive than dead.
Palau, one of the world’s preeminent dive sites,
banned shark fishing in its waters in 2009. Disgust
with the cruel practice of cutting off fins and leaving
the sharks to bleed to death has also led to bans on
sales and shipments of shark fins. As a result, you are
now more likely to have the excitement of seeing a
live shark than you were 20 years ago.
CLEANING UP POLLUTION
Too many nutrients in the water can cause algae to
bloom. The result is murky water, which is not ideal
for divers or for the organisms on the seafloor that
need light. When we take steps to clean up the water,
however, recovery is possible. Tampa Bay, Fla., is a
case in point. In the 1960s and 1970s, polluted water
caused algae to grow in the water, cutting off light to the
seagrasses growing on the seafloor and causing them
STEPHEN FRINK
to die. But thanks to new regulations, the Tampa Bay
Estuary Program announced in 2015 that seagrasses had
returned to 1950s levels, an extraordinary success by
any measure. That no doubt makes for clearer water in
Tampa Bay’s many dive sites.
A similar story can be told for Kāne’ohe Bay, on the
northeast coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Prior to the 1930s,
the bay was described as a coral garden, but decades of
chronic sewage contamination and several major spills
caused seaweeds to grow out of control and smother
the corals. In 1979 the sewage outfall was removed,
water quality improved dramatically, and the corals
recovered. Unfortunately, other problems are brewing,
particularly global warming, which has caused several
major coral bleaching events beginning in 2014.
Serious science is needed to address these and other
threats, in Kāne’ohe Bay and around the world.
HELP FROM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
The threat to coral reefs is so dire that some scientists
are working on developing super-corals more resistant
to high temperatures, selectively breeding the survivors
of past bleaching events, much as we have selectively
bred dogs and cats. Kāne’ohe Bay, the site of much past
destruction, is an epicenter for this effort; what better
place to look for resilient survivors than where more
than 21 percent of the corals died in 2015 because of the
too-warm water. Coral restoration depends on ensuring
local conditions are healthy where new corals are
planted, but these efforts will likely be more successful
in the long term if we start with the toughest corals.
This is also where scientists are developing methods to
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84 | WINTER 2018