Coral larvae can travel hundreds of kilometers from their parents before settling on a reef for the rest of their lives.
It was an ambitious idea, he said, that would require political support and significant financial backing (about $10 million by his estimate), as well as community buy-in. Not all super reefs can be cordoned off for fishing and other activities, he said.
“People need to live. People need to eat. People need to fish.” It would be essential, he said, to consult and co-design any protected area in this corridor with the communities that would be affected, as is being done in Laura.
But overall, the idea seemed feasible, said Edwards of the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority. “The idea of creating a multinational network of marine protected areas connecting resilient reefs in the Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu is a very promising concept,” he said.
Other experts agree. “Protecting home reefs and well-placed stepping stones between them can maintain dispersal networks that can share heat-tolerant adaptations and provide new coral larvae to help degraded reefs recover,” said Emily Darling, director of coral reefs at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Taking into account connectivity between high-integrity, climate-resilient reefs multiplies their conservation value across an entire region.”
Once established, Cohen said, this first Super Reef corridor could serve as a proof of concept for creating similar protected networks around the world.
He said future corridors could be created between Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, or between India, the Maldives and the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Ultimately, he said, the success of these networks would depend on the willingness of countries to collaborate and select which reefs they would prioritize. Her role, as she sees it, is to deliver the scientific data to inform those decisions. You want to make sure resources are directed where they can have the greatest impact: as quickly as possible.
“This is an urgent mission,” he said.
Meteorologists recently warned that El Niño conditions have formed once again in the tropical Pacific and are expected to strengthen this fall.
In the coming months, Cohen said, “we have a good chance of having a heat wave in the Marshall Islands.” He was already having nightmares about destroying the vibrant reefs he had just visited.
“It’s just a horrible feeling,” he said, looking out over a shallow reef off the coast of Bokanbotin.
But she wanted to be there when it happened. He had already started planning his trip back to the Marshall Islands before he left.
“We want to be there at the peak of that heat wave to send out Yellowfin and see how the corals are doing,” he said. “I have a pretty good idea which corals will hold up because we’ve seen them do it before. But we have to be sure.”
This article originally appeared on Insider climate newsa nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization covering climate, energy and the environment. Subscribe to their newsletter here.
