The Daily - Why the Coral Reef Crisis in Florida Is a Problem for All of Us

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

A marine heat wave is warming the waters off the coast of Florida, pushing temperature readings as high as 101 Fahrenheit and endangering a critical part of sea life: the coral reef.Catrin Einhorn, who covers biodiversity, climate and the environment for The Times, discusses the urgent quest to save coral and what it might mean for the world if it disappears.Guest: Catrin Einhorn, a biodiversity, climate and environment correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: A desperate push to save Florida’s coral reef, by getting it out of the sea.Measuring and comparing sea surface temperatures is complex, but scientists agree on one thing: 101 Fahrenheit in the ocean off Florida is bad news for wildlife.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. This extreme summer heat is not just impacting us on land. The oceans are now hitting dangerously high, record-breaking temperatures. A buoy in Manatee Bay recorded a temperature of 101.1 degrees. A historic heat wave is warming the waters off the coast of Florida, endangering a critical part of sea life, the coral reef. Scientists predict 70 to 90 percent of coral reefs could die off in the next 30 years. Today, my colleague Katrin Einhorn on the urgent quest to save coral and what it might mean for the world

if it disappears. It's Tuesday, August 22nd. Katrin, thanks for coming on. Good to be here. So Katrin, we've been hearing these pretty alarming reports of really hot water off the coast of Florida. And it's reached these incredibly high temperatures, like over 100 degrees. And we also know from your reporting that this is very bad for lots of different kinds of sea life, in particular for coral. So tell me what's going on. So, yeah, in early July, we started seeing sea surface temperatures in the 90s off the Florida Keys.

And that's way earlier than the hottest temperatures should happen, which is August and September. And my beat is biodiversity. So, of course, I'm thinking about coral reefs, which are these incredibly important ecosystems. Okay, coral reefs. So tell me about them. Well, when you think of coral, you probably think of these rock-like formations underwater, right? Those are called stony coral. They build these big reefs. They're like underwater forests made from limestone. But they're not rocks.

They're actually little animals. On these structures are lots of these tiny little animals. They look like sea anemones. They're called coral polyps. And so these animals are essentially clones of each other. They're all connected. And one colony can have thousands of these polyps. Whoa, crazy. And the way that they sustain themselves is even wilder. They have these little tentacles that they can put out and capture prey. But they also have this really cool symbiotic relationship with a kind of algae. The algae live inside the coral tissue and consume their waste. And when the algae photosynthesize, it creates sugar that feed the coral and they're getting most of their energy,

their food essentially, from this algae. So coral is basically a bunch of little animals laid out like a forest in the ocean and they have this algae. So coral is basically a bunch of little animals laid out like a forest in the ocean, and they have this algae inside them. Yeah, they have plant-like algae inside them. And this relationship between the coral and the algae is critical to the coral's survival. If the coral don't have algae, they eventually starve to death. And they need really particular conditions for this relationship to thrive, like water that's not too hot. Of course, with climate change comes hot water, and that is a really big problem for coral and in turn a really big problem for people. Okay, so explain that. How is it a big problem? So these tiny little animals make reefs that cover really a tiny fraction of the entire ocean floor, but they provide outsized benefits to the planet. I mean,

the first one is that these reefs, they create habitat for fish and other sea animals that use the reefs for shelter and food. And this is the really crazy thing. About a quarter of all marine life rely on coral reefs at some point in their life cycle. A quarter of all life in the ocean. It's a huge amount. It's crazy. And people rely on a lot of those fish for protein, particularly in the global south, right? Many communities don't have a lot of other options. And so these coral reefs are feeding people. have a lot of other options. And so these coral reefs are feeding people. And beyond that, another really important thing about coral reefs is that they protect coasts from storms.

Research shows that reefs break wave energy by an average of 97 percent. So like say there's a storm, it's whipping up waves. The structure of the coral reef will cause those waves to break before they get to the coast. Got it. So like protecting the coast from this pummeling that waves are bringing. Exactly. Yeah. And then coral generates tourism and supports many economies around the world. And there have been a bunch of estimates to try and figure out, like, what is the actual economic value that reefs provide? Like, how can we quantify that? And here in the U.S., it's been estimated they generate $3.4 billion annually in economic benefits. That's a federal estimate. And globally, that number has been estimated at $2.7 trillion. Oh, wow. Which is roughly the size of the GDP of France. That's huge. Okay, so coral is really vital in a lot of ways.

Yeah, absolutely. But coral reefs have really suffered over the last 40 years. We've just seen a massive degradation and loss of reefs and coral cover around the world. And of course, that is connected to rising sea temperatures and climate change. And that's what we see in Florida.

The Florida reef is the only extensive coral reef system in the continental United States. It's about 350 miles long. It's one of the largest barrier reefs in the world. And it's suffering mightily. And that brings us back to the beginning of our conversation, right, with the recent water temperatures off the coast reaching such alarming levels. Right, right. And so when we started seeing these extreme temperatures, we knew it was going to be bad for the reef.

But the question was, like, how bad is it now? Like, what's actually happening? And so I started calling scientists and folks in Florida to figure that out. I wish that you could kind of experience what it feels like to be in one of our nurseries. Florida to figure that out. And that led me to Bailey Thomason, who works for the Coral Restoration Foundation, a nonprofit based in the Florida Keys. And part of their work is creating underwater nurseries for coral. Nurseries create basically like a reef in themselves. There's structure, there's coral, there's so many fish that have made it their home after so many years.

And in these nurseries, they implant these structures that look kind of like trees. They sort of have branches. And the coral, the fragments of coral, hang off the branches. And they get bigger over time. So they can go from like a finger to a basketball size in about six or nine months. And the idea is to eventually transplant these corals onto these really damaged areas of the Florida reef to help restore it. So when the temperatures really started spiking in July, Bailey went out on a dive to a place called Sombrero Reef, which includes two species of coral, elkhorn and staghorn, that are threatened with extinction and particularly vulnerable to hot weather. So Bailey and her team knew that there was this 10-foot wild elkhorn coral structure there,

and they were going to collect some samples. So we actually went to Sombrero, and when we got there, we looked down, and I saw brown coral. And she gets there, and at first she just kind of glances at it, and she sees that it's brown in color, and so she's so relieved. Thank goodness, you know, we have something to collect that's still there. And why is the algae being brown good? Because when coral is healthy, it can have a brownish color, right? It takes on the color of the algae itself. But when the water

is too hot, it stresses the coral and the algae that it needs to survive is expelled, which leads to the coral turning white. That's known as bleaching. And it's a really bad sign for coral. You know, it means that it's at risk of essentially starving to death. But in this case, the coral was brown. But then as she gets closer, she realizes that the brown color is not healthy coral tissue. Instead, it's actually dead. Wow. A week before, her team had been there and it was in perfect shape. Oh my God. And now it was dead. So we were all really

upset. It was just kind of like a, okay, this is maybe what it's going to be. She thought, okay, that one's dead. She keeps going around the reef to try and find another sample that she can take. There was just not a single, single coral left. You know, we've been restoring coral there for over a decade at Sambara, and not a single one of those was alive. And it was just all dead. Just felt like, oh, my God, we're in the apocalypse. What's happening?

Yeah, that was a really hard time for us. So the next day, she goes to this other site called Lou Key Nursery. This has been like her work baby. She got to create this nursery. You know, I prepped the team. This has been like her work baby. She got to create this nursery. And this nursery she's created now houses a hundred of those man-made trees. And they're full of threatened coral. So we got there, we looked down, and we could already see, before you even got in, that there was just white coral everywhere. And she's still on the boat, and she said she looked down,

and she just sees that everything is white. It's all bleached. And she said that her and her team just, like, had a group hug. And we were like, this is going to suck. This is going to be really, they had to go look anyway. They dive in. It's as bad as they thought. She gets back out of the water and she calls her boss. And he told me that she was crying so hard that he couldn't understand her.

Like he thought that there had been some kind of accident. Oh no. She just said, we lost everything. And based on everything you said about how truly vital Coral is, I understand why she's so upset, right? This is a huge blow. I guess I'm wondering, is this the first time this has happened? No. This is like a slowly mounting catastrophe that scientists have been warning us about for decades, right? So before the very late 70s or early 80s,

there were no reports of mass bleaching, you know, which is when there's like widespread coral bleaching. Coral is really sensitive to heat, right? It can't be too hot. It also can't be too cold. And bleaching has often happened locally. That's a thing that a coral can do when it's stressed. But what's been happening now since the very late 70s or early 80s is these mass bleaching events, which weren't documented before that. And in my lifetime, they've just been growing in severity and frequency. So, for example, in 2005, the U.S. lost about half of its coral cover in the Caribbean in one year due to a massive bleaching event. And is this incident worse than ones of the past? The temperatures off the Florida Keys this summer were record-breaking.

And in this case, as we saw at Sombrero and some other sites in the lower and middle keys, the water was so hot that the coral just died. It didn't even bleach. But scientists don't yet know like what percentage of the coral has bleached or died. There'll be surveys over the next several months to figure that out. But temperatures have remained really high. And typically the worst temperatures of the year come in August and September. So it's not looking good. Well, why is the water so hot right now? There are natural marine heat waves, right? That's a thing that happens. And right now,

we're going into this El Nino cycle. So that's like a naturally occurring phenomenon that's associated with warmer water. But the thing is, is we've been burning fossil fuels and tearing down forests and releasing all these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the ocean has been doing a lot of work for us. The ocean has absorbed 90 percent, nine zero, 90 percent of that excess heat. So you take climate change and then you add natural phenomena like El Nino and you get events like this massive marine heat wave. You know, it's been record temperatures for the past month.

And for people who have devoted their lives to coral, it's not only really hard for them to reckon with what's happening in the ocean, it's raising really difficult questions about their work. We'll be right back. So, Katrin, you said that these coral restoration people, they're really worried. What is the plan now? I mean, what are they thinking about the future of their work now that this mass bleaching event, this effectively mass death event has happened? You know, in a lot of ways, their work has never been more important. event has happened. You know, in a lot of ways, their work has never been more important. As temperatures spiked, groups like Coral Restoration Foundation partnered with the federal government to gene bank coral that's at risk of extinction. They wanted samples of all

the remaining genetic individuals of Elkhorn and Staghorn in Florida. God forbid that they were wiped out by this terrible heat wave, right? So they were racing to get live coral out of the water and into tanks on land. You know, separately from all this, they've been selectively breeding coral that might end up being more resilient to warmer temperatures. But, you know, the whole idea is that they're eventually going to restore Florida's coral reef. And this marine heat wave is making some of them question how possible that is. And one person who's been grappling with this is this guy, Ken Niedermeyer, who some people call the godfather of coral restoration in Florida.

I know you've been in this for a long time. Like, how did you get into it? I owned my own business. We had a tropical fish wholesale business. get into it? I owned my own business. We had a tropical fish wholesale business. So Ken is super interesting because he got into this actually through a business that he had, which was selling tropical fish. He was a tropical fish wholesaler.

And he would dive and he would actually collect tropical fish to sell. And in the process of doing that, I was watching all the sea urchins dying, the coral bleaching. And I just started realizing there's no future in this if we don't have live coral. And over the years, he just saw the reefs declining and declining.

And it got to the point where in 1998, there was this mass bleaching event. And he just thought, like, what am I doing? I shouldn't be thinking about taking tropical fish or even coral out of the water and into aquariums. Like, I need to restore it here. I couldn't continue to do what I was doing. I had to do something about it, you know. So it's a big change in life. I mean, I took a huge pay cut

from what I was doing to what I'm doing now, but it's not about money now. It's about trying to make a difference. So what does Ken do? So Ken actually founds the group that Bailey works at now, which is Coral Restoration Foundation. Then he goes on to found another similar group called Reef Renewal. And it's all the things that we talked about, like making these nurseries, growing the coral in nurseries, moving them to the

reef. He's also doing gene banking. He's trying some selective breeding to actually try and help when there are corals that do survive these mass bleaching events, we'll breed them together and see if they're hardier and more resilient to temperature changes. But really, like, what it all comes down to is providing some kind of life support for the coral to get them through this difficult patch while hopefully the world addresses climate change so that then they can be ready to thrive in the future once temperatures are under control. He's like a hospital for coral. Yeah, he's like an ICU for coral. Okay, so Ken is spending his days and nights trying to save coral. What is it that he's thinking about now, now that this mass bleaching event has happened?

Like, what's he thinking about at this moment? Yeah, I asked him. He's really grappling with what it means for him. It's like not such a light question these days, of course. How are you? Like, how actually are you? What we're having right now, I just, I don't really know how to process it. We are on a scary, scary trajectory of huge amounts of mortality. This is beyond any worst case scenario we've ever imagined.

It's just tragic. So here he is providing all this life support, but the heat keeps getting worse, and that's undoing his work. And so it's harder for him to see where all of this is going. You know, I've invested 20 years of my life in this, not just, you know, this is just my job.

This is like an obsession of mine. I'm just like, I don't know how to, I'm not sure what, you know, where this is all going to go. I'm kind of, I think this is a preview of what it's going to be like, but it's a wake-up call. It should be a wake-up call to anybody. So Ken has essentially spent his entire life on something that is fundamentally a hopeful act, right? Saving these things, you know, preserving these magical and crucial organisms.

That is an act of hope. Has he lost that sense? I mean, how is he fundamentally understanding what is going on right now? I think he spends a lot of his day in just like go mode because he's still just doing everything he can to salvage what he can and help what he can. He's moving coral into deeper water nurseries. He's moving it onto land still. But the things that these coral restoration folks need the rest of the world to do like aren't happening. Right. There's been so much talk about climate change and what the world needs to do to make things better. But in reality, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States went up last year, not down. And globally, emissions were on target to hit a record high. You know, we are on track to exceed two degrees Celsius of warming, which is the point at which scientists expect coral reefs will essentially disappear. Wow.

And so scientists are saying the world needs to do a whole lot more. And ultimately, the work that Bailey and Ken are doing relies on the rest of the world to rein in emissions and to stop temperatures from hitting critical points. So they're basically out there saying, look, we're holding our breath trying to get to safety, but you guys keep not bringing safety. Right. We're trying to keep these corals alive while you guys fix this problem. And the world isn't fixing the problem nowhere near fast enough. Right. And unfortunately, I think a big part of what we're seeing with coral is that to many of us humans, it's hard to see the impact in our everyday lives. I mean, in some ways, that's been

the history of climate change. Right. Like the little changes that happen slowly over time are just not something that people actually clock. Right. Scientists have been sounding the alarm on coral reefs for so long. But this degradation that's been happening is really hard to grasp for, you know, people who don't see them every day. And, you know, reporting the story made me think of an experience I had as a kid. I went snorkeling with my family at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in the Keys. And I remember being totally transfixed by what I saw there. You know, I mean, it's like anyone knows this who's seen like a beautiful coral reef. It's just like teeming with life. It's this like bright underwater crazy world. And when I thought about this snorkeling trip, I realized that if I

went back now, I would not see the same reef. The reef would not be as vibrant as it was when I was there so many years ago. And I wondered like how much it had actually changed. And when I was talking to Ken, I actually asked him because he knows the area so well. and when I was talking to Ken I actually asked him because he knows the area so well like what does Pennekamp look now so I'm 45 so that would have been what 35 25 that would have been like 30 years ago right well does it look very different than it would have looked to me 30 years ago yeah um you know it used to be all live coral there. It used to be elk horn coral, stag horn coral, brain corals. Almost all of those are dead and gone. You know, if you had a discerning eye or if you had a before and after picture, you wouldn't recognize it. It's changed that much. But to like a layperson who would go and snorkel there, they would still be sort of blown away by the life that they see? They do. And they'll even go there now when the corals are all bleached white.

They'll think how beautiful it is. Huh. Because their idea of a coral is a white skeleton that they see in a shell shop or something. So when coral dies, the limestone structures are still in place for some time. There are some coral-dependent species that will go away immediately, place for some time. There are some coral-dependent species that will go away immediately, but there are lots of other species that will still use those limestone structures for habitat. Most people don't notice the subtle changes. They still come down here, the water's clear,

there's pretty fish, you know, there's sea fans, there's an occasional coral. So they'll go out there and they'll think, oh, it's so beautiful, And I saw a French angelfish. Or did you see all the sea fans? I mean, I've been on these boats. I see it. It's this shifting baselines thing. But I mean, I was diving down here 50 years ago. I know what it looks like. And so people who are snorkeling or diving will see this beautiful marine life.

And, you know, they may be transfixed by it like I was when I was a kid. And, you know, they may be transfixed by it like I was when I was a kid. Depending on the reef, the average person may not even notice how degraded it is. They may not realize. That's the sad part is that we'll just keep going as usual. It's getting more and more degraded, but they, you know, they're still going to be able to come down and they're going to think it's beautiful. And what makes it even worse is that because of the other impacts of climate change, we need these reefs more than ever, right? Like climate change fuels more intense hurricanes and we need reefs to protect the coasts.

Climate change causes all kinds of havoc with agriculture. And so the food that the reefs nurture becomes even more important right so just when we need coral reefs the most we're making them go away and that will have really terrible consequences for people katrin thank, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Monday. To my left is the banyan tree,

beloved by this community for over 150 years. President Biden visited the scorched remains of the town of Lahaina in Hawaii. His first visit there since wildfires killed more than 100 people on August 8th. Biden met with survivors of the fire, with emergency workers, and with state and local officials. Today is burned, but it's still standing. Trees survive for a reason. I believe it's a powerful, a very powerful symbol of what we can and will do to get through this

crisis. Standing by a 150-year-old tree, a landmark in Lahaina, he said that while the devastation in the town was, quote, overwhelming, the tree's survival was a symbol of the island's resilience. Officials have searched about 87 percent of the area affected by the fire, and several hundred people are still unaccounted for. people are still unaccounted for. And a judge in Atlanta set bail for former President Donald Trump at $200,000 in a sprawling racketeering case against him and 18 associates. The accused will be required to pay cash at the time of their booking, which was not the case in the three other criminal cases involving the former president. Defendants have to come up with just 10% of the bail amount.

But even that could prove difficult for some of them, including Rudy Giuliani, the former personal lawyer for Trump who's running out of money because of an array of legal entanglements. Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social that he would surrender to the authorities in Atlanta on Thursday. Today's episode was produced by Diana Nguyen, Carlos Prieto, and Samar Tamad. It was edited by Liz O'Balen and Paige Cowett. Fact-checked by Susan Lee. Contains original music by Dan Powell, Alicia Baetube, Marion Lozano, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi See you tomorrow