Plenty of dive magazines and websites will direct you to the
last remaining places in the ocean that still seem healthy and beautiful. But,
if you’d like a realistic/horribly depressing idea of what our underwater world
looks like when we don’t care for it, here are some of my favorites. You can
also feel fairly certain you won’t see sharks at any of these places—those tend
to be fished out quickly.
1. Near London, Kiritimati Atoll, central Pacific.
Also known as the “Ulva Dance Party” site. Ulva, along with
some other types of fleshy macroalgae (or seaweed), is used as an indicator for
nutrient pollution. Here, “nutrient” refers to inorganic compounds like nitrate
and phosphate—what you might use to fertilize your house plants. Where there
are excess nutrients, whether from sewage or golf course runoff or perhaps changes in the way nutrients cycle through the food chain due to fishing, these kinds of algae
flourish. Also helpful in the macroalgae-domination-transition is a relatively
small herbivorous (plant-eating) fish population, due to fishing them out, too.
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| Ulva mustache |
This site was also particularly nice when we were there,
because of strong surge. In order to get down underneath the ulva and identify
the few remaining live corals and the relict dead coral (we’re interested in whether
these two groups are different), we had to either fight the current to stay in
place for a moment, or try to go with the flow and identify on-the-fly as we
rocketed back and forth across the transect. A combo of the two seemed to work
best—watch the video to get a feel for what you are missing.
[I can't guarantee this won't make you seasick!]
Kiritimati does present some amazing coral-ogling
opportunities away from the larger towns, however. So be sure to dive elsewhere
to get an idea of how things perhaps used to look.
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| Coral bonanza! |
2. Chachahuate, Cayos Cochinos Honduras.
Unfortunately this site is probably no longer as gross as it
once was—the original “long drops” at the end of short piers on this tiny,
rather densely populated sand island have now been replaced by composting
toilets. So diving off of this caye may not get you an instant, roaring ear
infection anymore, and the coral may be recovering. When I last dove here in
2006 – good lord, has it been that long?! – many corals were being smothered by
sewage-fueled macroalgae and mats of cyanobacteria were marching over the
substrate. But, there was also a cool wrecked airplane, and that kind of made
swimming in poop-water Ok.
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| Part of the wrecked airplane, with hard and soft corals |
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| The orange stuff is a thick mat of cyanobacteria |
3. Western Teraina, central Pacific.
Kind of like the degraded part of Kiritimati, but replace
the ulva with cyanobacteria and sea urchins. And intensify the surge. Note that
urchins like to eat into dead coral; thus the effort of trying not to get
stabbed while grabbing onto a section of dead reef to stabilize oneself long
enough to attempt to identify said severely bio-eroded coral puts this
experience in my top ten most exhausting endeavors. If you’d like to feel as
though you’ve landed on a completely hostile aquatic planet, this is the dive
location for you.
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| There are at least 8 urchins in this photo |
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| Our surveys include identifying live and dead corals under a transect tape laid over (in this case, tied to) the reef |
4. South Molle, Whitsunday Islands, Australia.
For one thing, you get to wear a neon “stinger suit” (see
below) to prevent death by poisonous jellyfish. Also, there is very little to
see because the water tends to be murky, so you may not notice that the bottom
is mostly blanketed by, yet again, our friend macroalgae. My photos from our
kayak-camping-snorkel adventure (seriously recommended, what fun!) have been
lost, so you’ll just have to imagine this one. While the outer Great Barrier
Reef far from land is still quite spectacular in many of the less-trampled
locations, sites close to land tend to be less coral-reefy and more
algae-field-like.
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| So stylish! I stole this photo from somewhere online and then forgot where. Sorry, dudes |
5. Bikenibeu, South Tarawa, central Pacific.
If you ask at the hospital, you can probably be directed to
get as close to the main sewage outlet as possible. The best thing to do is free-dive
at this site, preferably without fully clearing your ears so that you perforate
an ear drum—all the better to get a most impressive ear infection that requires
five types of antibiotics to conquer. Aside from the thrill of bobbing at the
surface, being tossed around by large, fierce ocean swells offshore of an
island in the middle of the Pacific, you can also see an interesting example of
coral monoculture. Though there is fairly high coral cover (and not as much
macroalgae as some of these other sites), it is mostly all one species—kind of
like an underwater cornfield. Since coral reefs are usually considered the
“rainforests of the sea,” with extraordinary diversity, you are correct in
thinking that an underwater cornfield probably doesn’t function the same way as
a more intact reef.
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| Lots of Porites rus - and not much else. |
Sadly, this is only a short sampling of places humans have
very obviously degraded the coastal ocean. These effects are not restricted to
coral reefs, either (it just so happens I know most about them). With conscious
effort, the trajectory towards degradation can perhaps be reversed…but first it
has to be recognized. Wherever you next stick your head under the water, give a
good think about whether what you are looking at is healthy. Do you think it
looks the way it has always looked? Or can you see dead ghosts – a lack of
fish, large dead empty shells, old corals covered in algae? It’s hard to know
what was there before, but that’s where my kind of work comes in—to use a form
of environmental forensics to figure out how things have changed, and why.
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