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Reef Insurance | Earth Wise

January 4, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coral reefs around the world face multiple dangers from warming waters, acidification, human activity, and more. Powerful storms often cause tremendous damage to reefs. When possible, snorkelers and divers are deployed to try to repair damage to reefs. But philanthropy and government grants are basically the only resources available to fund such actions.

Three years ago, tourist businesses and the government in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo purchased an insurance policy to offset costs of protecting the local parts of the Mesoamerican Reef. The environmental group the MAR Fund later took out an insurance policy on the rest of the reef in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras.

With this precedent, the Nature Conservancy recently purchased an insurance policy on behalf of the state of Hawaii to help offset repair work on its coral reefs. It is the first U.S. coral insurance contract.

Coral reefs are more than just hosts for marine life. They provide barriers against ocean storm surges, which is a major financial incentive for protecting them and hence an incentive to invest in insurance.

The new Hawaiian insurance policy has a premium of $110,000 a year and will provide $2 million in protection. Payouts occur when wind speeds go above 50 knots. No further proof of damage is required.

The Nature Conservancy has created teams called ‘Reef Brigades’ composed of snorkelers and divers who recover reef fragments, store them in ocean or shore-based nurseries, and then re-attach them when conditions are safe. It can be very expensive to do this sort of work, particularly when new corals grown in a nursery are required.

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Analysis: First U.S. coral insurance marks the rise of the reef brigades

Photo, posted September 14, 2011, courtesy of Greg McFall/NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The Sounds Of Coral Reefs | Earth Wise

June 23, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coral reefs around the world face multiple threats from climate change, pollution, and other impacts of human activity. Reef conservation and restoration projects must be able to monitor the health of reefs and that is not such a simple matter. Surveying reefs generally is labor-intensive and time consuming. But in a new study, scientists at the University of Exeter in the UK have found a new way to do it.

The fish and other creatures living on coral reefs produce a vast range of sounds. The meaning of these various sounds is for the most part unknown, but reefs nonetheless have distinctive sonic signatures.

The Exeter researchers decided to make use of machine learning technology. They trained a computer algorithm using multiple recordings of both healthy and degraded coral reefs. This essentially taught the computer to learn the difference between them. A computer can pick up patterns that are undetectable to the human year. This application of artificial intelligence can tell us faster and more accurately how a reef is doing.

The computer was then used to analyze a set of new recordings, and successfully identified reef health 92% of the time. The team then was able to use this technique to track the progress of reef restoration efforts.

It is generally much cheaper and easier to deploy an underwater hydrophone on a reef and leave it there instead of having expert divers make repeated visits to a reef to survey its status. Sound recorders and artificial intelligence could be used around the world to monitor the health of coral reefs and determine whether efforts to protect and restore them are working.

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AI learns coral reef “song”

Photo, posted January 11, 2015, courtesy of Falco Ermert via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

PPE Pollution | Earth Wise

June 25, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

While the COVID-19 pandemic and its shutdown of so many human activities has reduced many kinds of pollution, it has also managed to create a new source of pollution: face masks and sanitary gloves.

Divers from a French non-profit organization called Operation Clean Sea are already finding gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer bottles beneath the waves of the Mediterranean, along with the usual litter of disposable cups and aluminum cans. In France, authorities have ordered 2 billion disposable masks. Given that, there may soon be the risk of having more masks in the Mediterranean than jellyfish. In Hong Kong, face masks have been piling up on beaches and nature trails. Even in Hong Kong’s isolated and uninhabited Soko Islands, dozens of masks are showing up on a small stretch of beach.

Disposable masks may feel like soft cotton, but almost all of them are made from non-biodegradable material such as polypropylene. When such masks are discarded into storm drains, they end up in rivers and seas. With a lifespan of hundreds of years, these masks are an ecological timebomb. Land-based activity accounts for 80% of ocean pollution, and half of that is a direct result of single-use plastics. Many of the CDC’s recent recommendations for reopening offices and businesses actually recommend the increased use of them, and for sensible reasons.

The best we can all do is to wear reusable masks and to try to wash our hands more often rather than putting on another pair of latex gloves. Given that there are alternatives, we don’t need to make plastic the solution to protect us from Covid-19.

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COVID-19 Masks Are Polluting Beaches and Oceans

Photo, posted March 28, 2020, courtesy of Michael Swan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.