Kosrae (Micronesia) is a stunningly beautiful, isolated Island out in the West Pacific. Tourist brochures and web sites still state that it has some of the healthiest hard coral in all of the Pacific. This was certainly true until very recently. Now the fantastic coral gardens are dead, killed by the 2024 mass bleaching event. Snorkeling the coral graveyard is haunting, with most of the structures still intact, hardly touched by erosion. It is easy to imagine the vibrant colors and diverse life of just two years ago.
While filming the reef to provide a baseline of the current condition for future visits, we found a few lonely survivors. It is something that we usually find after a mass die off, no matter where in the world we've been in the water. A few coral colonies can take higher temperatures. Unfortunately they are usually too few and too far apart for successful spawning. Very often they get eaten by Crown of Thorns Starfish and other predators.
They would be ideal candidates for restoration projects. There's even someone on the Island with the expertise to breed coral - but will he get funding and support to rescue and multiply the survivors before the next heat wave hits?
You can find the video transects here: https://www.planet-ocean.org/corals.html?center=162.968807,5.271992&zoom=18&layer=arcgis
>>planned route - join us ...