Global warming has become the main threat to coral reefs around the planet. The increase in temperatures and the acidification of the oceans caused by climate change, together with pollution, overfishing and the development of human activity, have made 50% of these ecosystems disappear in the last 30 years, of which 80% depend on marine species. The Red Sea, however, seems defenseless to this gradual process of destruction. Its coral reef has managed to survive the heat stress, much more pronounced in that area of the Middle East, becoming a hope for its survival in a much warmer future.
However, one of the main external threats to consolidating this potential coral refuge are the marked political differences between the riparian countries - Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt -, which share a sea barely 2,000 kilometers long and 300 wide. These misgivings have prevented the sharing of the different studies on the different coral species that coexist in the Red Sea - specifically those found in the Gulf of Aqaba - and their resilience against global warming. The different economic development strategies of their respective governments, many supported by the expansion of tourism, also pose an obstacle to their future conservation.
In order to seek scientific and political coordination in the region that allows progress in the studies of the particularities of this ecosystem and to preserve it, in 2019 the Transnational Research Center on the Red Sea (TRSC, for its acronym in English) was established. , promoted by the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland. The agency tries to promote, based on scientific diplomacy, transnational collaboration between researchers already working in the region and plan common protection strategies. His first expedition to achieve these objectives sets sail this Thursday from Seville. It is the Swiss sailboat
Fleur de Passion,
which will serve as a logistics platform for the investigations.
The challenge is to organize a common environmental protection for all the Red Sea countries, because local pollution is going to spread rapidly to the rest of the area.
Anders Meibom, one of the founders of TRSC
Professor Anders Meibom, one of the founders of the TRSC and responsible for the expedition, explains: “The challenge is to organize a common environmental protection for all the countries of the Red Sea, because local pollution is going to spread rapidly to the rest of the area.
To achieve this, it is important that strategies are based on science.
Until now, the investigations are state and not available to others, but to protect the ecosystem it is important to share the data.
One of the main studies on the singularities of the Red Sea coral, promoted by Maoz Fines, TRSC ideologist and professor at Bar Ilan University, in Israel, was published in 2019 in the
Journal of Experimental Biology
. The report confirmed that the thermal immunity of these corals carried over to their descendants. Meibom says: “What makes this coral unique is that it can withstand a much warmer climate, which is what we will achieve in a few years. Its different species, instead of bleaching and dying with rising temperatures, are maintained. This gives us hope to preserve this coral ecosystem for future generations ”.
In the expedition, the TRSC will provide the technological capacity so that the researchers who are working in the different universities and maritime platforms of the countries that border the Red Sea can carry out a detailed database of its coral reef and examine its capacity. resistance to high temperatures.
Meibom explains that they have designed a system to control coral bleaching: "It is a kind of small aquarium in which we incorporate coral samples and subject them to a very precise heat stress to check how they react to photosynthesis with algae."
The taking of samples and the analysis of the coral and the DNA of the species of its ecosystem will be decisive to have a better knowledge of the structure of that reef.
The genetic sequencing of the different coral species of the Red Sea atoll will also occupy a relevant space in the expedition.
The taking of samples and the analysis of the coral and the DNA of the species that make up its ecosystem will be decisive to have a better understanding of the structure of that reef.
The use of the most advanced genomics to predict the adaptation models of corals to these waters will also be promoted.
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Eight researchers of different nationalities will go aboard the sailboat: Israelis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Germans, Saudis… Meibom points out: “We did not come to do science for them, but to organize it with them.
There are very good researchers and scientists, who use methodology and share objectives, but who work on individual projects.
For the first time they are going to work together and they are going to generate common programs.
Soon to move coral
The coral reef of the Red Sea.
When the sea level dropped in the Ice Age, the Red Sea became isolated. The reefs were recolonizing the southern area, where temperatures are higher. "These corals are capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 36 degrees Celsius," Meibom points out. Several studies agree that a rise in global temperature of more than two degrees would lead to the disappearance of 90% of the planet's reefs. Knowing how and why the Red Sea have managed to adapt to these climatic conditions could help advance the readaptation of other species in other areas. A coral transplant to other atolls, however, seems hasty for Meibom.
The professor, who also directs the EPFL's Biological Geochemistry laboratory, explains: “Corals cannot be transferred from the Red Sea to other parts of the planet, because they tend to adapt to the environment in which they live. The conditions of this sea are very specific, such as the high salinity of the water, which does not occur in other ecosystems ”. And he continues: “If we take this coral for example to the Australian Great Barrier Reef, some species would survive, but most would not. In the future, maybe biochemistry can help create a more resistant coral, but the only way to recover reefs is by eliminating the stress to which they are subjected, and the first thing is to reduce carbon emissions ”.
If research collaboration between the countries of the Red Sea does not seem like a problem due to the open nature of science, to be able to coordinate programs at a regional level that reduce these CO₂ emissions and limit the impact of human activity on the reef of coral seems more complicated. Israel has once again allowed the transit of ships in the Aqaba area with the risk of oil spills that already had a negative impact in the 1960s and 1970s; the Egyptian government has opted for mass tourism and diving on that coast and Saudi Arabia plans to build an eco-city on its shores. Meibom notes: “This is a very small area and protecting the ecosystem requires everyone to follow the same rules. It is difficult to know what will be the level of protection to which each State will commit itself,but all are aware and know the damage that the loss of the coral reef could cause for them ”. This is where the famous Swiss diplomatic neutrality will play a decisive role. "We can be the motivators and the moderators," says the teacher.
Why Seville?
The choice of Seville by the Transnational Center for Research on the Red Sea as the starting point of the expedition that will take it to examine the coral reef of this body of water over the next four years may seem strange, but not it is casual.
The
Fleur de Passion
sailboat
,
owned by the Fundación Pacifique, which collaborates with the entity,
set sail from the port of Seville in 2015
, and it arrived four years later after recreating the circumnavigation of the Earth that Fernando Magallanes and Juan Sebastián El Cano also began in the Andalusian capital. 502 years ago.
On that voyage, the Swiss ship mapped sound and microplastic pollution in the oceans, the effect of greenhouse gases and the health of reefs.
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