Saving Corals

UN OCEAN DECADE

Sustainable tourism is a powerful tool for fostering cultural understanding and building bridges between people from diverse backgrounds, contributing to peace and cooperation globally.

A perfect example of this is the role coral reefs play in tourism. These vital ecosystems not only captivate millions of visitors but also provide essential economic support. Tourism linked to coral reefs promotes environmental awareness and helps fund conservation efforts that protect these fragile ecosystems.

Fiji’s BULA Reef, an initiative led by Corals For Conservation and endorsed by the #OceanDecade, demonstrates how sustainable tourism can be a force for good. BULA Reef is the largest rescue reef of its kind in history, made up of over a thousand heat-adapted “super corals”, taken from areas of extreme heat stress where the corals were in danger of dying. It not only protects marine biodiversity but also empowers local communities by creating jobs and enhancing their role as environmental stewards

SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/25gxngfVfYsSyMXW/

UN Ocean Decade: https://ow.ly/hgfb50TwUQQ

With the UNESCO endorsement, and with Bula Reef as the first successful major coral rescue in the face of an approaching severe marine heat wave, we are getting a lot of attention. The UN Ocean Decade is singling us out Reefs of Hope from among the multiple projects out there.

We are presently the only UN-endorsed coral focused climate change adaptation programme on the planet, and while we have a long way to go to get the funding and to build the capacity needed, all of the many Reefs of Hope partners in Fiji and the South Pacific who endorse and practice the strategies will in time benefit as part of a major regional programme.

I am in Kiribati and just met with the Permanent Secretary of Fisheries and the Director, and our next step will be to draft a national coral species recovery and restoration plan for the horrifically damaged coral reefs here, on the leading edge of coral reef collapse due to climate change. We will need to develop similar plans for Tuvalu, which was just hit by a mass coral die-off bleaching event, and for Samoa, Vanuatu, and Fiji all of whom just lost more corals. Fiji suffered our first back-to-back bleaching years and it looks like 2025 will be a third coral bleaching year for the region.

News from Belize shows a horrific die off worse than last year occurring in the Fragments of Hope sites. The time is approaching when all of the hot pocket reefs of Fiji and other reefs will be gone, so time is running out. But even then not all will be lost, as two new reports from Australia show that some of the heat-adapted diversity has worked its way out into cooler waters, where it might survive. But it is clear that time has run out, we cannot wait any longer!