EL PAÍS offers the América Futura section openly for its daily and global information contribution on sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.
In front of Jerson Cierzo Enríquez there are two blue buckets full of salt water, a tangle of green and yellow ropes and hundreds of tiny corals Acropora cervicornisknown as staghorn or little fingers, due to its elongated and thin shape. Leaning on a bench, this former fisherman braids these little pieces at full speed between the threads while explaining that this is one of the reproduction phases of the species. The enormous row will rest today in a “nursery” of corals on the seabed. Eight months later, they will measure between 10 and 15 centimeters and will be ready for their final transplant into the depths of the ocean. “Only nature works there, letting them grow and fill everything with colors again,” he says without taking his eyes off his task. “We help them make the process faster.”
Two years ago, Cierzo Enríquez did not know in such detail how to optimize coral reproduction. He was a fisherman, one of the few who did not grow up watching the men in his family fish. Neither his father, nor his uncles, nor his brothers were dedicated to the task, but there was something about the salt and loneliness of the boat that called him 25 years ago. For more than two decades, he teamed up with the harpoon and nylon and traveled the entire coast of Santa Marta, in the Colombian Caribbean, in search of mojarra, bass and snapper. “He earned what was necessary to survive,” he remembers on this bench at the El Rodadero Aquarium, in front of Inca Inca Beach, a white sand bay that conquers tourists from all over the world. “Before there was more of everything: more fish and more coral. Many more. The seabed was full of color and life. Today there are few and they are pale,” he says. The competition on the high seas and the desire to serve his hometown made him give up fishing, without having to give up his wrinkled fingers. For two years, he has proudly carried the title of coral gardener and works restoring and multiplying various species. Cierzo and four other colleagues have an ambitious goal: to leave the ocean “as beautiful as when I was little.”
When this man with dark skin and eyes says that the corals are pale, he is referring to an evil that is plaguing practically all the corals in the world: bleaching, the last breath they take before dying. This ailment has to do with the harmful interference of humans and the fascinating characteristics of this animal.
Corals are considered animals because they are not capable of completely producing their own food. Although these bodies bring out their tentacles at night to hunt zooplankton, their daytime nutrition depends on the symbiosis with the zooxanthellae algae, which is also responsible for providing colors to the reef. When the coral is stressed (due to increased sea temperatures, water pollution or overfishing), it expels this algae, loses its food and, gradually, its color. Therefore, whitening is a sign that you are about to die.
“The only way to reverse this evil would be if the conditions that cause stress cease,” explains Juan Pablo Caldas, director of Sustainability of Marine and Fisheries Resources of the Oceans Program, of Conservation International Colombia. “But it has been many years since sea water has warmed so steadily over time. That is why the coral does not have the capacity to recover and dies.” According to him latest report According to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (Gcrmn), approximately 14% of the world's coral was lost between 2009 and 2018. This is equivalent to about 11,700 square kilometers, more than all the living coral in Australia. The United Nations forecasts are not at all promising either: between 70% and 90% of these ecosystems will be extinct or close to being so by 2050.
Cierzo and Smith Urieles eat ice cream after the shift, after passing the baton to the other colleagues. It's June and the heat is melting the vanilla cream down the sides of the wrapper. Diana Tarazona, biologist and field coordinator of the coral project, jokes with them and supervises the rows that are ready for the nursery. In the aquarium they are in charge of two of them and a small laboratory that seeks to optimize the method of sexual reproduction of these animals. “Gardeners are very valuable because of the innate knowledge they have of the area. They are our engineers and our restoration technicians. And they are very linked to the project,” she will say minutes later in her office, while she opens a box full of medicines for the aquarium animals she also cares for. “What there is is work,” she adds with a laugh. “But it is part of a whole. Preserving the seabed is not isolated actions.”
The Santa Marta gardeners are part of a much larger program known as a million corals. The initiative, co-financed by the Colombian Ministry of the Environment and Conservation International Colombia, seeks to restore 200 hectares of coral reef on the Pacific and Caribbean coast, in order to increase the country's living coral coverage and once again dye the bottom with colors. Marine. Together with local organizations and corporations, community members, marine biologists and technicians, they have been fighting for two years against the bleaching of these animals in 12 locations on the islands of Rosario, San Bernardo, Santa Marta, Chocó, Cauca and the San Bernardo archipelago. Andrew. In this last location 77% of Colombian corals are found.
Colombia is a strategic country in the fight against whitening. More than 115 species of stony corals live on the Caribbean coast alone (they are the hardest and the ones that serve as structures on which the others are founded). and about 20 in the Pacific. In the 90s, the variety that Cierzo and the other gardeners work with practically became extinct, due to climatic conditions and, above all, due to fishing with dynamite, a very common practice that Urieles, 39 years old, remembers perfectly: “Many fishermen used gunpowder to kill the fish, they took the biggest ones. I never dared, because the dynamite killed a fisherman uncle of mine. “I became very afraid of it and only fished with a net.” This very common technique destroyed hundreds of reefs, especially those that are shallow like these. little fingers. Of them, only 10% survived.
“It wouldn't work without communities”
For Caldas, from Conservation International Colombia, the loss of these ecosystems is “terrible”: “On the one hand, because of their enormous biodiversity and, on the other, because they are a valuable barrier against rising sea levels. Coral reefs protect the coasts. They are essential”. Furthermore, although corals only cover 0.2% of the seabed, they support at least 25% of species and are the basis of the economy of thousands of coastal populations around the world. According to the UN, more than 500 million people live there.
The key to the project, for Caldas and for Fabio Arjona, executive director at Conservación International, are the communities. “Involving them was not an option we considered when shaping the project. It was a requirement sine qua non. They are the main ones affected and those who can contribute the most to the restoration. That they make a living from this is an example that the 'blue economy' is an alternative and a great job generator.” The nationwide project has more than 200 gardeners who earn a minimum monthly salary (about 200 euros).
Convinced of that same idea, CAF-development bank of Latin America and the Caribbean decided to invest $125,000 in this project in Santa Marta. Of this amount, 80,000 will be used to promote the aquarium laboratory, which can encourage the laborious task of sexual reproduction of corals. This occurs just once a year, when corals release countless gametes into the water that join together and form larvae (planulae) that navigate the sea until they settle on the bottom and start a new reef. Since a large part of these gametes are lost along the way, the task of biologists is to optimize the natural process so that on that single night of spawning, the success rate is much higher. David M. Hudson, scientific director of the CIM Caribe Foundation, says it is like having children. “The precision at which these corals synchronize is incredible. In Santa Marta, for example, it is usually in August, between 8:45 and 9:20 at night. We go night and night and night and there is not always spawning. But when we collect them, we spend at least a week without parting with them day and night. Yes, it's like having them in the crib.”
Although asexual reproduction is usually easier and cheaper, no one wants to give up the biodiversity and native wealth of the place. The new individuals produced through the sexual techniques that Hudson is responsible for will give rise to varieties that are more resistant to climate change. “They are very important,” she says. Tarazona, on the other hand, knows that restoration times are as slow as they are vital. “We are doing our part,” he says. She and the entire team of technicians and gardeners are ensuring that healthy and colorful oceans are not just Cierzo's childhood memory.
#coral #gardeners #recolor #seabed #Colombian #Caribbean