Marine biologist Dr. Peter Houk joins KPRG's Naina Rao to share discoveries from the National Geographic Pristine Seas expedition across Micronesia's waters.
TRANSCRIPT
HOST/NAINA RAO: The Pacific Ocean is home to some of the most biodiverse coral reefs on the planet, and few places are as ecologically rich as the Federated States of Micronesia. But these reefs face increasing threats from climate change and human activity. A 2023 National Geographic expedition in collaboration with Blue Prosperity Micronesia, set out to study these fragile ecosystems, aiming to fill critical gaps in scientific knowledge. One of the scientists on board was Dr Peter Houck, a professor at the University of Guam. I spoke with him about what the team discoveries mean for the future of coral reefs in the region.
DR. PETER HOUK: It's been a long time coming. We've been fortunate to collect fisheries and coral reef data for a long time on the main islands. But these outer atolls, how are they adapting with climate change? Do they even have human fishing pressure footprints? Are there resources in jeopardy? There's shorelines being eroded all these questions from some of the outer atolls have so many gaps in them, and through a partnership with a program called the Blue prosperity Micronesia and the National Geographic Pristine Seas, they decided to take us on and let our teams join on their boats and do a combined expedition for About a month and a half.
RAO: What makes these waters so special, and why was this expedition necessary?
HOUK: Now, first of all, what makes these places so special is from land you have incredibly unique forests that are completely made of one tree that's endemic to that island. So this is just something that doesn't exist anywhere. Out on the coral reefs, you have some of the highest species diversity under the quote, quote US flag that you can find. And why do we need to do this now? Is because of the simple and most pressing issue facing us, climate change.
RAO: Now, did you find any evidence of resilience in these ecosystems, or was the data more alarming?
HOUK: So we found patterns. What I'll say on every island scale. This means every atoll would go to. If we went to the edge of the channel, we would see corals that survived heat stress and so on. Then when we look spatially though heat stress, we thought that every time there's an El Nino, all the islands just get impacted. It's just not the case. We saw heat stress impacts that were, I would say, mild to moderate in some places like or look and that's kind of Eastern FSM, and in central FSM, like Chuk, unfortunately, heat stress has returned in an incredibly severe manner. There was hard to find a single living coral on some of those reefs to go down and just see utter devastation from climate change repeated, we find large spatial patterns that were alarming, but help us learn. And then we also find smaller scale patterns around the atolls that help us prepare, manage, what we call mitigate. We can't manage climate change. It's we're not going to stop it, but we can mitigate it to the best extent possible.
RAO: Your team spent weeks conducting underwater surveys, working with local communities. What were some of the most surprising or significant discoveries from this expedition?
HOUK: One of the most amazing findings I saw was I know quite specifically when climate change heat stress has occurred on reefs, and when you can dive down on a reef and swim across and see corals that have clearly escaped the heat stress, so like, they got COVID, but no, they weren't affected. They kept growing. And you see corals that were completely dead, but there's nine new corals growing on top of it. This is like a living laboratory to learn from when climate change comes and the heat stress comes, it's pretty much simply a matter of your genetics. So the corals all get sick with an equal propensity, with an equal chance, but then when it comes to recovery, years later, less humans will promote faster recovery. So I guess what I'm getting at is that we think of resilience as how far you go down and how fast you come up. Both. It's two pieces. And so I'm kind of teasing that apart and saying that's the climate change part and the human stressor part. Okay,
RAO: how do you see your findings and the findings from this expedition translating into real world protections for Micronesia waters.
HOUK: So already on the main or populated islands, as we collect our data, we've been very successful in sharing this with stakeholders, because ultimately, it's them who are going to manage their reefs. We've successfully integrated and now have grouper spawning protection for four months Pohnpei and in Chuuk. And recently, in the latest fisheries survey, the fishermen in Pohnpei are catching more groupers than they were before. On a broader scale, we estimate that over the past 10 years, climate change has reduced approximately 16 point something species of coral from. Reefs, that's a huge number. So because climate change is repeating itself, the heat stress keeps on repeating itself, certain corals just drop out of the equation, and a reef is not made of one coral. You need a reef to be complex, because when it's complex, there's fish habitat. When it's complex, the wave energy gets dissipated instead of eroding the shoreline. And so with the loss of 16 species just in the past 10 years due to climate change, we hope that we could provide that powerful number to leaders youth groups, and they can take it to international forums and seek climate justice. And
RAO: I know in many Pacific nations, conservation efforts involve traditional knowledge and local stewardship. How did communities in FSM respond to the expeditions findings, and what role do they play in protecting these ecosystems?
HOUK: It was so interesting to see the diversity of local forms of management across some of these atolls. So in the island of Pingalap, you had very it's a very small atoll with a fairly high population but very healthy resources. In one Atoll, Pulap atoll, in chute, the chief started to realize the pressures of modern and traditional ways. And he said, You know what? We can fish, but we're not using the flashlight on very special occasions. Will we ever use the flashlight to fish at night? Yet in Ouelai and Yap and some other places, you have reefs that are segregated. You're from this clan, you fish this way, and that's your reef. And so because that's your livelihood, you tend to take care of it better. But generally speaking, more is definitely needed, because traditional knowledge is having a tough time dealing with this climate change. It's hard enough dealing with boats coming in and asking for your fisheries resources, and now all of a sudden, this climate change, and it's really difficult.
RAO: FSM already has some marine protected areas, but do you think they go far enough like what additional measures would you recommend?
HOUK: What part of the Micronesia challenge has done was to say you can choose how you want to protect your reefs, and what they've realized along the way is that a network of marine protected areas is wonderful, especially if it can cover 30% of the reefs. If you have areas that are connected to each other covering 30% of your reef, you're doing good to protect yourself. But it's not enough to deal with the modern forces, the flashlights, the underwater, the pressure, and so people are starting to realize they also need certain forms of regulations, such as the group responding protection, or whether it's watershed protection, things like that. So there's a lot going on, and I'll just summarize that it goes way beyond marine protected areas. You could think of marine protected areas as your daily jog. It's gonna help you, but maybe it's not enough to fend off everything in your life. You
RAO: that was Dr Peter Houk, a professor at the University of Guam's Marine Laboratory. You can learn more about his work at micronesiareefmonitoring.com.
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