Just when we think there are no major discoveries left to be made on our planet, we find a natural wonder slowly growing beneath the waves for centuries – the world’s largest coral reported to date, a massive shoulder blade coral (Pavona clavus), bigger than a blue whale. Formed by nearly 1 billion identical tiny creatures, it is thriving in the Solomon Islands’ Three Sisters region.
While the world is marveling at this three-century-old domed giant covered in ripples that mirror the ocean’s surface, we are simultaneously witnessing the most devastating coral die-off in recorded history. According to the latest global assessment, 44 percent of reef-building coral species now face extinction.
In Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, marine scientists recently uncovered what they describe as a “graveyard of corals” near Cooktown and Lizard Island, with some reefs losing up to three quarters of their coral cover in a single season. This devastation is part of the fourth global mass bleaching event, driven by rising ocean temperatures, which has already affected more than 70 percent of the planet’s corals.
The situation is so dire that the United Nations called a special emergency session in October, which prompted new country pledges of around $30 million in funding for coral protection. This vastly insufficient funding would be laughable if this wasn’t a global crisis that affects coastal communities, mostly in the Global South.
Coral reefs support a quarter of all known marine species and nearly a billion people’s livelihoods, making their loss catastrophic for global food security and efforts to end poverty. We also cannot afford to lose the protection coral reefs provide to coastal areas from intensifying storms.
Recognition of the Three Sisters mega coral – which coexisted with and survived figures like Darwin, Curie, Gandhi, and Einstein – reminds us that marine ecosystems hold secrets of resilience we’ve yet to understand. It is exciting that the mega coral news prompted colleagues to contact us with unreported observations of similarly large corals. But time is running out to protect them.
We know that while protection of reefs cannot cool seawater down, it can foster resilience to warming events. In the Southern Line Islands, Kiribati, I witnessed firsthand how a fully protected marine area enabled the reef’s recovery after a massive coral bleaching event in 2015-2016. When we returned to these islands five years after the marine heatwave killed half of the corals, we hoped to find even modest signs of recovery. Instead, we discovered that the reef had made a complete comeback, with coral cover returning to pre-bleaching levels.
The key to this success lies in the abundance of species like parrotfishes and surgeonfishes that clean algae trying to grow over the dead corals, and keep “empty” space for new coral growth. These “super reefs” show that when we give marine ecosystems genuine protection from human impacts, they can display resilience even as waters warm. True protection from fishing is the only way to bring back those large fish abundances that will enable the reefs to bounce back.
But the scale of ocean protection needed – to both conserve marine biodiversity and preserve the ocean’s role as a carbon sink on a warming planet – is staggering. While nations have committed to protecting 30 percent of the ocean by 2030 (30×30), only 8 percent currently has any protection, and less than 3 percent is protected strictly enough to deliver substantial benefits for marine life and people.
The adoption of marine protected areas (MPAs) has been slow in part because of misconceptions surrounding their economics and disinformation about the impacts to fisheries. Policymakers often see MPAs as costs rather than investments, despite research showing that every dollar invested in MPAs generates $10 in economic output through tourism, improved fishing just outside their boundaries, and other benefits to communities.
I just returned from the Solomon Islands, where I met with community members and government officials who have already committed to designating a large swath of their beautiful seas for protection. Policymakers there are now considering how to best conserve the Three Sisters mega coral and its surroundings for the good of their country and our planet. Local and global excitement about the mega coral reminded me that it’s not just about the science, but also the sense of pride that the ocean’s wonders can bring to all of us.
To be sure, MPAs cannot on their own end the looming crisis of coral and other marine extinctions. Crucially, the world must dramatically curb the emission of the greenhouse gases that drive global warming. But protecting the right 30 percent of our ocean will buy us time.