The first time I cried underwater was in 2008, the island of Curaçao, way down in the southern Caribbean. It's beautiful there. I was studying these corals for my PhD, and after days and days of diving on the same reef, I had gotten to know them as individuals. I had made friends with coral colonies -- totally a normal thing to do. Then, Hurricane Omar smashed them apart and ripped off their skin, leaving little bits of wounded tissue that would have a hard time healing, and big patches of dead skeleton that would get overgrown by algae. When I saw this damage for the first time, stretching all the way down the reef, I sunk onto the sand in my scuba gear and I cried. If a coral could die that fast, how could a reef ever survive? And why was I making it my job to try to fight for them?
Prvi puta sam plakala pod vodom 2008. godine, kod otoka Curaçao, duboko u južnim Karibima. Predivno je tamo. Proučavala sam te koralje za svoj doktorat i nakon mnogo dana ronjenja na istom grebenu, upoznala sam ih pojedinačno. Sprijateljila sam se s kolonijama koralja, što je sasvim normalna stvar. A onda ih je uragan Omar raskomadao i pokidao im kožu, ostavljajući male komade oštećenog tkiva koji će teško zacijeliti te velike dijelove mrtvog kostura koji će zarasti algama. Kada sam prvi puta vidjela tu štetu koja se protezala duž cijelog grebena, spustila sam se na pijesak u svojoj opremi i zaplakala. Ako koralj može tako brzo umrijeti, kako uopće greben može preživjeti? I zašto sam borbu za njih preuzela na sebe?
I never heard another scientist tell that kind of story until last year. A scientist in Guam wrote, "I cried right into my mask," seeing the damage on the reefs. Then a scientist in Australia wrote, "I showed my students the results of our coral surveys, and we wept." Crying about corals is having a moment, guys.
Nikada nisam čula da je neki drugi znanstvenik ispričao sličnu priču sve do prošle godine. Znanstvenik u Guamu je napisao: "Plakala sam ravno u masku, vidjevši štetu na grebenima." Zatim je znanstvenik u Australiji napisao: "Pokazao sam svojim studentima rezultate naših analiza koralja i plakali smo." Plakanje zbog koralja je popularno.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And that's because reefs in the Pacific are losing corals faster than we've ever seen before. Because of climate change, the water is so hot for so long in the summers, that these animals can't function normally. They're spitting out the colored algae that lives in their skin, and the clear bleached tissue that's left usually starves to death and then rots away. Then the skeletons are overgrown by algae.
A to je zato što grebeni u Tihom oceanu gube koralje brže nego što smo ikada prije vidjeli. Zbog klimatskih promjena, mora su ljeti toliko dugo topla, da ove životinje ne mogu normalno funkcionirati. One izbacuju šarene alge koje žive u njihovoj koži, a bezbojno izbjeljeno tkivo koje ostane obično umre od gladi i onda istruli. Zatim kosturi budu obrasli algama.
This is happening over an unbelievable scale. The Northern Great Barrier Reef lost two-thirds of its corals last year over a distance of hundreds of miles, then bleached again this year, and the bleaching stretched further south. Reefs in the Pacific are in a nosedive right now, and no one knows how bad it's going to get, except ... over in the Caribbean where I work, we've already been through the nosedive. Reefs there have suffered through centuries of intense human abuse. We kind of already know how the story goes. And we might be able to help predict what happens next.
Ovo se dešava u nevjerojatnim razmjerima. Sjeverni dio Velikog koraljnog grebena izgubio je lani dvije trećine koralja u dužini od stotine kilometara, onda je ponovo izbjelio ove godine i izbjeljivanje se proširilo dalje na jug. Grebeni u Tihom oceanu sada su u propadanju i nitko ne zna koliko loše će to još biti, osim... u Karibima, gdje radim, već smo prošli kroz taj proces. Tamošnji grebeni stoljećima su trpjeli intenzivno ljudsko iskorištavanje. Mi već otprilike znamo kako to ide. I možda ćemo moći pomoći u predviđanju onoga što slijedi.
Let's consult a graph. Since the invention of scuba, scientists have measured the amount of coral on the seafloor, and how it's changed through time. And after centuries of ratcheting human pressure, Caribbean reefs met one of three fates. Some reefs lost their corals very quickly. Some reefs lost their corals more slowly, but kind of ended up in the same place. OK, so far this is not going very well. But some reefs in the Caribbean -- the ones best protected and the ones a little further from humans -- they managed to hold onto their corals. Give us a challenge. And, we almost never saw a reef hit zero.
Pogledajmo grafikon. Otkad postoji ronilačka oprema znanstvenici mjere količinu koralja na morskom dnu i kako se ona mijenja kroz vrijeme. I nakon stoljeća ljudskog utjecaja, karipske grebene je zadesila jedna od tri sudbine. Neki grebeni su izgubili svoje koralje vrlo brzo. Neki grebeni su izgubili svoje koralje sporije, ali su na kraju završili isto. Ok, sve ovo do sada ne zvuči baš dobro. Ali neki grebeni u Karibima, oni najbolje zaštićeni i oni malo udaljeniji od ljudi, uspjeli su zadržati svoje koralje. Dajte nam izazov. I skoro nikada nismo vidjeli da je greben sasvim propao.
The second time I cried underwater was on the north shore of Curaçao, 2011. It was the calmest day of the year, but it's always pretty sketchy diving there. My boyfriend and I swam against the waves. I watched my compass so we could find our way back out, and he watched for sharks, and after 20 minutes of swimming that felt like an hour, we finally dropped down to the reef, and I was so shocked, and I was so happy that my eyes filled with tears. There were corals 1,000 years old lined up one after another. They had survived the entire history of European colonialism in the Caribbean, and for centuries before that.
Drugi put sam plakala pod vodom na sjevernoj obali Curaçaoa 2011. godine. Bio je najmirniji dan u godini, ali tamo je uvijek prilično nezgodno roniti. Moj dečko i ja plivali smo uz valove, gledala sam svoj kompas kako bismo mogli naći put za natrag, a on je pazio na morske pse i nakon 20 minuta plivanja koje su izgledale kao jedan sat, konačno smo se spustili do grebena, i bila sam toliko iznenađena i toliko sretna, da su mi se oči ispunile suzama. Koralji stari tisuću godina nizali su se jedan za drugim. Preživjeli su čitavu povijest europske kolonizacije Kariba i još stoljeća prije toga.
I never knew what a coral could do when it was given a chance to thrive. The truth is that even as we lose so many corals, even as we go through this massive coral die-off, some reefs will survive. Some will be ragged on the edge, some will be beautiful. And by protecting shorelines and giving us food to eat and supporting tourism, they will still be worth billions and billions of dollars a year. The best time to protect a reef was 50 years ago, but the second-best time is right now. Even as we go through bleaching events, more frequent and in more places, some corals will be able to recover.
Nikada nisam znala što koralj može, ako mu se da prilika da napreduje. Istina je da, iako gubimo toliko puno koralja, iako prolazimo kroz masovno izumiranje koralja, neki grebeni će preživjeti. Neki će biti oštećeni na rubovima, neki će biti predivni. Štiteći obale, dajući nam hranu i podupirući turizam, i dalje će vrijediti milijarde dolara godišnje. Najbolje vrijeme za zaštitu grebena bilo je prije 50 godina, no, drugo najbolje vrijeme je upravo sada. Iako prolazimo kroz slučajeve izbjeljivanja sve češće i na sve više područja, neki koralji će se moći oporaviti.
We had a bleaching event in 2010 in the Caribbean that took off big patches of skin on boulder corals like these. This coral lost half of its skin. But if you look at the side of this coral a few years later, this coral is actually healthy again. It's doing what a healthy coral does. It's making copies of its polyps, it's fighting back the algae and it's reclaiming its territory. If a few polyps survive, a coral can regrow; it just needs time and protection and a reasonable temperature. Some corals can regrow in 10 years -- others take a lot longer. But the more stresses we take off them locally -- things like overfishing, sewage pollution, fertilizer pollution, dredging, coastal construction -- the better they can hang on as we stabilize the climate, and the faster they can regrow.
Imali smo slučaj izbjeljivanja 2010. na Karibima, koji je skinuo velike dijelove kože s kamenih koralja poput ovih. Ovaj koralj je izgubio pola svoje kože. No, ako pogledate stranu ovog koralja nekoliko godina kasnije, ovaj koralj je, u stvari, opet zdrav. Čini ono što i svaki zdravi koralj, stvara kopije svojih polipa, bori se protiv algi i ponovo zauzima svoj teritorij. Ako par polipa preživi, koralj može opet izrasti; samo mu je potrebno vrijeme, zaštita i umjerena temperatura. Neki koralji mogu se obnoviti za 10 godina, drugima treba mnogo više. Što ih više stresa oslobodimo lokalno, poput prekomjernog izlova ribe, zagađenja kanalizacijom i gnojivima, iskapanja morskog dna i gradnje duž obale, toliko bolje će izdržati ako stabiliziramo klimu te će se brže obnoviti.
And as we go through the long, tough and necessary process of stabilizing the climate of planet Earth, some new corals will still be born. This is what I study in my research. We try to understand how corals make babies, and how those babies find their way to the reef, and we invent new methods to help them survive those early, fragile life stages. One of my favorite coral babies of all time showed up right after Hurricane Omar. It's the same species I was studying before the storm, but you almost never see babies of this species -- it's really rare. This is actually an endangered species. In this photo, this little baby coral, this little circle of polyps, is a few years old. Like its cousins that bleach, it's fighting back the algae. And like its cousins on the north shore, it's aiming to live for 1,000 years.
I dok prolazimo kroz dug, težak i neophodan proces stabiliziranja klime na Zemlji, izrast će i neki novi koralji. To proučavam u svom istraživanju. Pokušavamo razumjeti kako se koralji razmnožavaju i kako ti potomci pronalaze put do grebena te stvaramo nove načine kako bi preživjeli te rane, krhke faze života. Jedan od mojih omiljenih malih koralja svih vremena pojavio se odmah nakon uragana Omar. Iste je vrste kao onaj kojeg sam proučavala prije oluje, ali skoro nikada ne vidite potomke ove vrste, to je zaista rijetko. I radi se o ugroženoj vrsti. Na ovoj fotografiji, ovaj mali koralj, ovaj mali krug polipa, star je nekoliko godina. Kao i njegovi rođaci koji blijede, bori se protiv algi. Kao i njegovi rođaci na sjevernoj obali, planira živjeti tisuću godina.
What's happening in the world and in the ocean has changed our time horizon. We can be incredibly pessimistic on the short term, and mourn what we lost and what we really took for granted. But we can still be optimistic on the long term, and we can still be ambitious about what we fight for and what we expect from our governments, from our planet. Corals have been living on planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They're badasses.
Ono što se događa u svijetu i u oceanu promijenilo je naš vremenski horizont. Kratkoročno možemo biti nevjerojatno pesimistični, i oplakivati što smo izgubili i što smo zaista uzimali zdravo za gotovo. Ali dugoročno još uvijek možemo biti optimistični i ambiciozni za ono za što se borimo i što očekujemo od svojih vlada, od našeg planeta. Koralji žive na planetu Zemlji stotinama milijuna godina. Preživjeli su izumiranje dinosaura. Oni su tek opasni.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
An individual coral can go through tremendous trauma and fully recover if it's given a chance and it's given protection. Corals have always been playing the long game, and now so are we.
Pojedinačni koralj može proći ogromnu traumu i potpuno se oporaviti ako mu se da prilika i prikladna zaštita. Koralji su uvijek igrali na duge staze, a sada i mi činimo isto.
Thanks very much.
Velika vam hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)