Saving Coral Part 3

Funding the reef

The lack of money devoted to research, restore and preserve coral reefs is possibly the most
perverse aspect to the entire tragedy. Unlike cutting down the Amazon rainforest or
blowing the tops off mountains to mine for coal, humans did not intend to destroy the
world’s coral reefs. But we have known for 30 years that they are vanishing before our
eyes, and have done close to nothing to save them – not even taking appropriate measures
to improve water quality. Even if water temperatures fall after a bleaching event, corals in
polluted areas struggle to recover – such as the Caribbean coral ecosystem, which has been
almost entirely annihilated.

“The ultimate challenge is who is going to fund the rebuilding of the reefs?” asks Frank
Mars – a member of the Mars family (as in the chocolate), the third richest family in
America. “I have had the budget and the freedom to experiment with different approaches
and work on this problem for 15 years. But philanthropy alone cannot solve this problem.”

A mature Biorock installation in Indonesia populated with corals and fish. © Delphine
Robbe.
Dr Gates in Hawaii agrees. “For years I had to stagger on without funds – federal agencies
were never keen to fund coral research, either because they didn’t understand the
importance of it, or because they were never big on funding cutting edge science where the
outcome is unknown. Fortunately, philanthropists have stepped in,” says Dr Gates, whose
work is funded by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. “But we urgently need more money
– no two reefs in the world are the same, so we have to try a lot of things in a lot of
different places – and that’s just not possible without the funds.”

The lack of any international effort to fund coral preservation does not make for cheerful
reading, but a ray of hope can be found in the price tag of coral preservation: all signs
indicate it would be astonishingly cheap.

“People have talked about ‘billions’ of dollars, but I think that’s a fancy number. Literally
for $1m or $2m I could take elk horn coral off the endangered species list in Florida within
just a few years,” says Dave Vaughan, who believes his simple microfragmentation
technique is ready to change the world.

“How many organisms can you say that for? Not many. If somebody asked me if I could
take the polar bear off the endangered species list for $100m, I would have to say no, I
can’t do it. But a species of coral? I’d say $10m, tops - and I can do it in two years.”

The question clearly is not if we can save the coral reefs, but if we choose to.

By Zoe Cormier
Featured image by Delphine Robbe