Staghorn coral returned to Carysfort Reef by the Coral Restoration Foundation.
Marine Biologist shares the impact of coral reefs on the world
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Asia Tabb
Staghorn coral returned to Carysfort Reef by the Coral Restoration Foundation.
Airdate: October 10, 2024
Dr. Richard Smith is the author of The World Beneath: The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs. Smith has completed 400 dives since he began his journey 30 years ago. Along those dives, he realized coral reefs are disappearing.
“ I’ve seen them just sort of become degraded and coral bleaching, which is when the water generally is a bit warmer than it should be through climate change, the corals start bleaching, which means that they lose the little symbiotic algae in their cells and they become pure white, like you said, paper. So that means that those algae, if left and the little the coral itself, which is like a little jellyfish, it’s sort of on its own after that.”
Coral reefs needs specific conditions to thrive. There needs to be sunlight for little algae within the coral cells to photosynthesize.
“Then they give the sugars to the the corals, which then build these huge eyesores structures on the reef. So you need like that physical structure, you need shallow areas for the corals to sort of establish themselves and to grow.”
Dr. Smith wants readers to take away how incredible the animals are that live on the coral reefs, like the pygmy horses.
“But that was so incredible because the behaviors, the interactions between each other just on this huge scale. And, you know, like I’m a marine biologist and behaviorist, so I don’t want to sort of put human emotions into animals mouths, really. But the pygmy seahorses that I studied had these initially elaborate behaviors where the males were strangling each other. And there was it was like a soap opera. So there’s just this is there’s so much to coral reefs that I want people to take away. But ultimately, it’s something that’s very important that we protect.”
