In life, when someone works hard to provide and protect others, they are almost always met with award and praise. There are also plants, animals, and ecosystems that work full time to provide many useful services and resources that humans seem to refuse to recognize every day. One of the most hardworking of these branches of life is the tropical coral reef ecosystem. Coral reefs are the farmers of the ocean. They provide food, food security, and income for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Corals also act as protectors of the shoreline because their solid structures are what block storm surges and massive waves from destroying the shoreline. The biological systems that live in corals are also what cleans and filters out the oceans which promotes a cleaner environment for all marine life which triggers a multitude of other benefits for many other types of marine life. Corals can also be viewed as chemists in that scientists today are discovering new chemistry and molecules found in corals on reefs around the world that are quickly becoming important today in advances in modern medicine. One service that corals provide that some consider one of its greatest features is its absolute beauty. The complex structures that coral reefs build create some of the most stunning images on Earth. This beauty attracts the attention and money of millions of tourists per year, which in many cases sustains the economies of many Caribbean and other tropical countries around the world where valuable natural resources are not prevalent (Marhaver 0:00-1:50). Collectively, economists estimate that the value of the services corals provide are in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year globally (NOAA). Coral reefs have done nothing but provide yet humans have done everything possible to destroy them. People are overfishing oceans and replacing them with harmful chemicals, sewage, fertilizers, oil, toxins, and diseases. Over the past few decades, reefs around the world have also been trampled over by boats and heavy machinery used for coastal construction. The absurd amount of carbon dioxide that humans put in the atmosphere have heated up the oceans and literally changed their chemistry making the coral’s surrounding environment one of constant hostility. All of these pressures that humans put on coral reefs are terrible on their own, but when put in combination with each other, their negative effects only multiply and build off of each other (Marhaver 2:00-2:36). Conservationists around the world have been consistently voicing their opinions on this topic for several decades, yet still nobody seems to truly care and if people do not care, then no progress will be made on this issue. Humans cannot look for the answer to this problem by trying to fix the mistakes they made in the past, but there is still hope. Scientists are discovering many new methods of conserving corals without reversing many of the irreversible, adverse effect of human intervention. They have also recently discovered several small sparks of hope such as the discovery of adaptable baby corals found on coral reefs considered dead long (Marhaver 6:56-7:23). In the end, humans may make some progress on this issue by fixing the ecological mistakes we made in the past. Through the application of our ever-increasing knowledge of genetics and technology, development of innovative methods to promote the growth of corals, and persistent and diligent research on corals, humans have the best chance of saving the Earth’s coral reefs thereby saving all of the essential benefits they provide.

Before one can understand the true magnitude of this issue, one must know what a coral actually is. As described by Kristen Marhaver in her Ted Talk, corals are asexual reproducing organisms that most commonly reproduced through mass spawning in which on one night per year every individual of a certain coral species releases their eggs and sperm, packaged together in a membrane, into the water column. Hopefully, the egg and sperm filled membranes reach the surface of the ocean safely, break apart, and find their respective egg or sperm cell. It is important to have plenty of corals on a reef so that they have plenty of other corals to reproduce with. After a baby coral is created by a sperm and egg cell, its cells divide until it becomes a tiny swimming larva made of fat cells and are the size of a poppy seed. Even at this early stage in a corals life, the larva can sense color, light, textures, chemicals, pH levels, and even pressure waves. They use these senses to find a safe spot on the sea floor where they will live out the rest of their lives. After finding a new home, the larva will then develop a skeleton, a mouth, and tentacles becoming a coral polyp in order to begin the long process of building and strengthening the Earth’s coral reefs. After a polyp fully develops, it will divide and begin to form a skeleton of limestone beneath itself as it grows up towards the sky. After hundreds of years, these limestone structures become so big that some can be seen from space. When coral reefs grow to this scale, their benefits are most prevalent and their benefits magnify each other. One of the primary reasons corals are so special is because they are hosts to millions of other species. It is through these millions of diverse species that these systems can be stabilized. It is also through this biodiversity that scientists are discovering new medicines, including cancer medications and better antibiotics (Marhaver 4:27-6:28).

Before moving forward, there is a strong relationship between corals and algae that must be defined. Most corals found on reefs contain a special type of algae that is absolutely essential to the survival and strength of corals. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this alga is called zooxanthellae, a self-duplicating and photosynthetic alga that has a mutualistic with corals. When a coral begins its building cycle on the sea floor, zooxanthellae algae take shelter in the cytoplasm of the cells of corals. From there, the coral provides zooxanthellae the necessary compounds for photosynthesis such as glucose, glycerol, and amino acids. In return, the algae use these compounds to produce oxygen through photosynthesis and help corals clean the water. These compounds are also used by corals to make proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and calcium carbonates which all play important roles in the strength and survivability of coral reefs. This strong relationship between corals and zooxanthellae forms a process that efficiently recycles nutrients in nutrient-deprived tropical water. This mutualistic relationship is the primary driving force behind the efficiency and productive nature of healthy coral reefs (NOAA).

For the past several decades, scientists have done a great job of thoroughly documenting the effects of human intervention on coral reefs and the consequences of this interference. From these observations, humans can see what mistakes they made and on how great of a scale the effects are. One of the most immense large-scale effects is ocean acidification, a process in which the increasing temperature of the atmosphere, caused by increasing greenhouse gases emissions - primarily carbon dioxide - which increases the temperature of our oceans, making them more acidic, which effectively creates a hostile environment for corals because most corals can only survive in a certain temperature range (Fears). Most corals cannot adapt quickly enough to the rapidly increasing temperatures and therefore die off. This is a perfect example of a negative, irreversible consequence of human intervention. Though some of these consequences seem impossible to reverse, some are more manageable for humans to reverse such as overfishing. 

According to scientists from James Cook University, The Australian Institute of Marine Science, The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and many other reputable organization, fish are one of the key factors in a coral reef’s survival. This is one of the few factors effecting coral growth that people can and have learned how to control through fishing restrictions. In a study done in the journal Nature and written about by Nature World News, coral experts analyzed the biomass from 832 coral reefs around the world. They concluded that there is a certain ratio of biomass per hectare, biomass per hundred square acres, which they concluded to be a hundred kilograms of biomass per hectare. Looking back at their data, of the 832 coral reefs observed, 83 percent had less than 500 kilograms of fish biomass, which is the minimum amount of biomass needed to maintain a stable coral reef ecosystem. There is also comfort in the fact that about sixty-four percent of the studied reefs with fishing regulations were discovered to sustain more than fifty percent of their maximum potential biomass (Iacurci). This shows that some of the mistakes humans made in the past are well-worth our while to reverse because they are manageable issues that when fixed, fosters the prosperity of the coral reef ecosystem. There are also other mistakes that can be alleviated in a reasonable time frame such as coastal development, which release a multitude of harmful chemicals into the ocean and atmosphere. Government enforcement of ecological restrictions on things such as the amount of pollution that can be released into the waterways, the ground, and the atmosphere is critical for their restrictions to be obeyed.

Although it is important for humans to learn from their mistakes, people should not only look there for the solution to the entire coral reefs issue. One of the first methods invented to restore coral reefs is replanting, which is exactly what it sounds like. People all over the world are planting new corals and trying to figure out the most efficient methods of raising healthy corals, which has created a whole new field for scientists to research. In her article, Gaia Vince explains how scientists all over the world are now experimenting with artificial structures and are discovering that a surfaces geometry plays a huge role in coral reef growth. One of these structures is a two ton, twelve-meter steel structure named Lotus. This structure is attached to a cable linked to an energy source on the surface that runs a slight low-level electric current through the cage. This electric current is used to expedite the coral growth process because it draws calcium carbonate out of solution and are naturally deposited on the structure. This is essential for expediting the coral growth process because calcium carbonate are the what young coral polyps build their skeletons off of. The scientists who conducted this experiment have observed that young corals find this structure’s surface to be almost irresistible to live on (Vince). Scientist are now experimenting in labs with corals under different conditions to find out how to best recreate the optimal growing and living conditions for corals in their natural environment, primarily tropical waters. The results of this experiment and many others like it give hope to the survival of corals in the future and inspire others to develop new and more advanced methods to promote coral growth instead of trying to fix some of the irreversible effects of human intervention.

In the past several years, scientists have discovered small signs of hope for the survival of corals in the most unsuspecting place in the world, dead coral reefs (Marhaver 7:02-7:17). What is so interesting about these corals is that they are baby corals. This has led the scientific community to believe that baby corals may be able to adapt more quickly to their quickly changing environments. Dr. Julia Baum, a respected coral researcher and biology professor at the University of Victoria, believes that, “If we can understand that [what makes corals able to survive], then we can start to develop targeted solutions to preserve corals throughout the next century of climate change.” (Khan). This is why in the past several years, scientists have been more focused the future by researching more about what makes some coral more resilient and adaptable than others. In the future, scientists may be able to utilize this knowledge to reproduce more resistant and adaptable corals that will then continue to provide many of the essential benefits corals provide. The hope that this new knowledge gives has promoted scientists to develop new and innovative methods of optimizing coral growth and strength. Vince introduces one of these new methods involving the exchange of a coral’s algae with more tough algae that scientists have proven to produce stronger corals. Scientists have also been studying and looking for more types of corals that can withstand warmer water temperatures, the primary negative factor effecting corals (Vince). 

There is one last method that people have just started to put into practice that has gone overlooked for decades and could very well become one of the lead contributing factors in the restoration of corals all over the world. In her Ted Talk, Marhaver tells her audience how that in her personal experience, almost every person she asks, no matter their intelligence, almost always does not know what a coral is. This is a problem because people cannot care about a cause they do not know anything about. At James Cook University, Carl M. Stepath wrote his dissertation on the effects of education of three key factors essential for proper action to be taken.  In his PhD dissertation, Carl – a student at James Cook University – discusses the effects of environmental education on students’ attitudes concerning marine ecosystems, especially those of corals. This study explores the relationship between the awareness, attitudes, and agency skills of students after they have received education inside and outside of the classroom. These students were first trained in the classroom about reef ecology. They then were taken on several field trips to the coral reefs off the coast of Australia so that they could have some firsthand experiences in learning how to successfully monitor coral reefs, thereby increasing their ecological agency. In this study, the students were split up in to four groups. The control group received no education in or out of the classroom, the second group received only in class presentations, the thirds group only received hands-on learning experiences out on the reefs, and the fourth group received coral ecology education both in and out of the classroom. Stepath found were that the awareness scores of students who received both forms of education were much higher than those who received none or only one type of education. He also found that students with previous experience on coral reefs had higher ecological attitudes and agency skill scores (Stepath). This study shows that people all over the world are constantly trying to figuring out new ways to help the cause even though they may not have the extensive knowledge that many accomplished scientists have about biology and marine ecosystems. This shows that anyone can find a way to help the cause.

In the end, this issue is on such a grand scale that there cannot just be a singular solution that reverses all the negative effects of human intervention. Although humans can learn from their previous ecological mistakes and avoid the same ones in the future, this alone cannot solve the coral problem by itself. There is no definite answer because the answer to this problem lies within the combination of all the methods recently found and those soon to be found in order to promote coral growth and strength all over the world so that humans may continue to benefit from all of the essential resources they provide. What is so interesting about this issue is that so many people choose to ignore it even though this is such a pressing and time sensitive matter. In the future, it is essential that people today and the generations to come are properly educated on this topic because no one can be expected to care about a cause if they don’t even know what a coral is. In the end, it is impossible to pin point what will be the biggest contributor to coral restoration or if human efforts will even succeed, but humans will lose too much if we stop trying now. On top of that, corals deserve to be treated with the utmost respect because all they do is provide for others and support one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet and all humans have done all they can to destroy them.
