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 put sam plakala pod vodom 2008. godine, kod ostrva Kurasao, duboko u južnim Karibima. Lepo je tamo. Proučavala sam ove korale za svoj doktorat, i nakon mnogo dana ronjenja na istom grebenu, upoznala sam ih pojedinačno. Sprijateljila sam se sa kolonijama korala - sasvim normalna stvar. Onda ih je uragan Omar rasturio i pokidao im kožu, ostavljajući male komade oštećenog tkiva koji će se teško zaceliti i velike delove mrtvog skeleta koje će alge obrasti. Kada sam prvi put videla ovu štetu koja se protezala celom dužinom grebena, potonula sam na pesak u svojoj ronilačkoj opremi i plakala sam. Ako koral može da umre tako brzo, kako greben može uopšte da preživi? I zašto sam ja preuzimala na sebe da pokušavam da se borim za njih?
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 naučnik ispričao takvu priču - do prošle godine. Naučnik u Gvamu je napisao: „Plakala sam pravo u masku," videvši štetu na grebenima. Potom je naučnik u Australiji napisao: „Pokazao sam svojim studentima rezultate naših analiza korala i plakali smo." Plakanje zbog korala je u modi.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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.
I to je zato što grebeni u Pacifiku gube korale brže nego što smo ikada ranije videli. Zbog klimatskih promena, voda je letima toliko topla, toliko dugo da ove životinje ne mogu normalno da funkcionišu. One ispljuvavaju šarene alge koje žive u njihovoj koži i bezbojno izbeljeno tkivo koje ostaje obično umre od gladi i onda istruli. Onda alge obrastu skelete.
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 neverovatnom obimu. Severni Veliki koralni greben je izgubio dve trećine svojih korala prošle godine u dužini od stotina kilometara, onda je ponovo izbeleo ove godine i izbeljivanje se proširilo dalje na jug. Grebeni u Pacifiku su sada u sunovratu i niko ne zna koliko će loše postati, osim... U Karibima, gde radim, već smo prošli kroz taj sunovrat. Tamošnji grebeni trpe vekove intenzivnog ljudskog zlostavljanja. Otprilike već znamo tu priču. I možda ćemo moći da pomognemo da predvidimo šta se sledeće dešava.
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.
Konsultujmo grafikon. Otkada je ronilačka oprema izumljena, naučnici mere količinu korala na morskom dnu i kako se ona menja kroz vreme. I nakon vekova rastućeg ljudskog uticaja, karipske grebene je zadesila jedna od tri sudbine. Neki grebeni su izgubili svoje korale veoma brzo. Neki grebeni su izgubili svoje korale sporije, ali su na kraju završili na istom mestu. Okej, do sada ovo nije veoma dobro. Ali neki grebeni u Karibima - oni najbolje zaštićeni i oni malo udaljeniji od ljudi - su uspeli da zadrže svoje korale. Dajte nam izazov. I skoro nikada nismo videli da greben skroz propadne.
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 severnoj obali Kurasaa 2011. godine. Bio je najmirniji dan u godini, ali tamo je uvek prilično nezgodno roniti. Moj momak i ja smo plivali uz talase. Gledala sam svoj kompas da bismo mogli da nađemo put nazad, a on je pazio na ajkule i nakon 20 minuta plivanja koji su izgledali kao jedan sat, konačno smo se spustili do grebena, i bila sam toliko iznenađena i bila sam toliko srećna da su mi se oči ispunile suzama. Korali stari hiljadu godina su se nizali jedan za drugim. Preživeli su čitavu istoriju evropske kolonizacije Kariba i vekove pre 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.
Nisam znala šta koral može da uradi ako mu se da prilika da napreduje. Istina je da, iako gubimo toliko puno korala, iako prolazimo kroz masovno izumiranje korala, neki grebeni će preživeti. Neki će biti na ivici nestanka, neki će biti lepi. Štiteći obale, dajući nam hranu i podržavajući turizam, i dalje će vredeti milijarde dolara godišnje. Najbolje vreme za zaštitu grebena je bilo pre 50 godina, ali drugo najbolje vreme je upravo sada. Iako prolazimo kroz slučajeve izbeljivanja sve češće i na više mesta, neki korali će moći da se oporave.
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 izbeljivanja 2010. u Karibima koji je skinuo velike delove kože sa kamenih korala sličnim ovima. Ovaj koral je izgubio pola svoje kože. Ali ako pogledate stranu ovog korala nekoliko godina kasnije, ovaj koral je u stvari opet zdrav. Radi ono što zdrav koral radi. Pravi kopije svojih polipa, bori se protiv algi i ponovo zauzima svoju teritoriju. Ako nekoliko polipa preživi, koral može ponovo izrasti; samo mu je potrebno vreme, zaštita i pogodna temperatura. Neki korali mogu ponovo izrasti za 10 godina - drugima treba mnogo više. Ali što više stresova ih oslobodimo na lokalnom nivou - stvari kao što su prekomerni ribolov, zagađenje kanalizacijom i đubrivima, iskopavanje morskog dna i izgradnja duž obale - utoliko bolje mogu da izdrže ako stabilizujemo klimu i mogu da brže ponovo izrastu.
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 stabilizacije klime na planeti Zemlji, neki novi korali će se ipak roditi. Ovo ja proučavam u svom istraživanju. Pokušavamo da razumemo kako korali prave bebe i kako te bebe pronalaze put do grebena i pronalazimo nove načine da im pomognemo da prežive te rane, krhke faze života. Jedna od mojih omiljenih koralnih beba svih vremena se pojavila odmah nakon uragana Omar. Iste je vrste kao ona koju sam proučavala pre oluje, ali skoro nikada ne vidite bebe ove vrste - to je veoma retko. Ovo je u stvari ugrožena vrsta. Na ovoj fotografiji, ova mala beba koral, ovaj mali krug polipa, je nekoliko godina star. Kao njeni rođaci koji se izbeljuju, bori se protiv algi. I kao njeni rođaci na severnoj obali, planira da živi hiljadu 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.
Dešavanja u svetu i okeanu su promenila naš vremenski horizont. Kratkoročno možemo biti neverovatno pesimistični i oplakivati šta smo izgubili i šta smo zaista uzimali zdravo za gotovo. Ali još uvek možemo biti optimistični na duge staze i još uvek možemo biti ambiciozni oko onoga za šta se borimo i šta očekujemo od svojih vlada, od naše planete. Korali žive na planeti Zemlji stotinama miliona godina. Preživeli su istrebljenje dinosaurusa. Opasni su momci.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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 koral može da prođe kroz ogromnu traumu i da se u potpunosti oporavi ako mu se da šansa i ako mu se da zaštita. Korali su uvek strpljivo čekali, kao i mi sada.
Thanks very much.
Hvala puno.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)