The Resilience of the Reefs

Conservation Letters - 2018 - Beyer - Risk‐sensitive planning for conserving coral reefs u.

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resilience

It’s a word that one does not always think of when describing our environment. We have succumbed to depressive attitude the mass media has been selling to us about climate change. While our humanly activities and emissions have been wrongfully hurting the world beyond new limits, our world still perseveres and continues to adapt.

Resilience is a word that not most tend to think of when describing our world’s environment. As a whole, I fear that majority of our population is succumbing to this depressive idea from mass media that we have gone too far beyond the point of no return. Most people have lost hope. They think of Mother Nature as l fragile, irreversible, and completely vulnerable to humans. The truth is, that is far from the case— Mother Nature is powerful. She has the power to adapt to the changes that life on Earth shows her. I have just recently done a Citizen Science Survey on coral reefs in Beqa Lagoon, Fiji during my Discover Abroad Semester. Our findings have shown that, although some older corals still experience bleaching as a stress response due to water temperatures rising, the younger corals have been showing adaptations to the warmer climates such as the corals’ zooxanthellae becoming more fluorescent to combat the Sun’s UV rays. This finding was exciting news! Another example, coming from the Hawaii archipelago, we learned that a small reef that had always been open to the public for recreational activities had been in much distress prior to Covid. The reef was dying, and it needed help. Then, the pandemic was unleashed, stopping the world for about two critical months. Within those two months, we learned and saw evidence that the reef was able to rejuvenate and regenerate itself. Because that is what Mother Mature can do— she is powerful. These small acts of resilience I have seen this past semester (through the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources Discover Abroad program) was enough to give me hope. Hope—that although we may not be able to completely clean our world of all the toxins we’ve exposed it to through years of mass industrialization and ignorance, our generation could be the one to make small positive changes collectively, turning it into bigger ones. Although Mother Nature is powerful and resilient, she is not indestructible. She needs the help of all life forms, and that is where we can help. Like I have learned from my sustainability credits during my trip this semester to Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji—we need to start thinking of people as a part of the land, not apart from it.

Even in a small-scale or local setting, every small drop of help can lead to a tsunami of change. Sustainability, as a whole, is an overwhelming task to target; it can cause environmentalists great disheartenment when looking at the big pictures. Our generation has a job: to zoom into the little pieces where we can make local and small-scale differences, and lead by example.