The Gathering Storm: Preparing for a Very Strong El Niño

Yikes.

So you mentioned that you were in the water doing bleaching surveys during that 2015 El Nino.

So can you tell us a little bit more about sort of what those impacts from even what you mentioned was like a strong El Nino or one of the first widespread bleaching events in Hawaii was? Sort of what those impacts are and then what this sort of unprecedented level of heating is likely to bring to coral reefs in terms of those impacts.

Yeah.

Have you have you watched the documentary Chasing Coral?

No, I haven't actually.

You definitely should.

It's pretty much, it's the best depiction of the human experience during a bleaching event like this.

It follows some researchers in Australia that are basically documenting the mass bleaching event that they had around the same time.

And when I saw that movie, I was like, oh, wow, that was my life.

That was exactly what we went through.

So I did coral bleaching surveys for actually four different entities during that time.

I was doing coral, yeah, I was doing bleaching surveys for the Division of Aquatic Resources, for the University of Hawaii, for NOAA then, and then finally for TNC.

And it was horrible.

At the end of the day, I mean, the numbers can paint a picture.

The west side of Hawaii Island lost about half, lost about 50% of our coral.

Half of our coral died within a period of about three months.

Across Hawaii, the average is more like 30% loss.

So we got hit a little harder than the rest of the state here on the Big Island.

And so the numbers tell you one thing, but the experience of being in the water and, you know, nobody gets into this work for the paycheck or the glory or, you know, we all are doing this work because we love these ecosystems and these places, these reefs are so much a part of us that... watching and documenting, taking the data and recording how these ecosystems were dying in front of our eyes was, it was, it was terrible.

And I'm really not looking forward to this year, honestly, but I think about what we were able to do in 2015, about just documenting, that was what we were able to do.

And it was really important because we know, I can say those numbers now, it's actually 49.7%.

So I say about half, we lost about half of our coral.

And without that documentation, we wouldn't have that backup to say, look, we need to do something about this because these reefs are not recovering on their own.

Since that time, and watching how much the reef restoration community has expanded and built capacity in Hawaii, I have a lot of hope for this year that even if we lose more, we're so much better positioned to actually start to catalyze recovery quickly.