By David Helvarg
The photos in this article are credited to David Helvarg
The Photo Banner is credited to Daniel Bettech
Drifting 70 feet below the surface amidst shoaling reef fish with a pod of bottlenose dolphins above you and a school of grey sharks below is a dream come true for most divers. Now I’m living that dream but also fearing the possible loss of the wonders that surround me.
I’ve thought of visiting French Polynesia (FP) since I was 11, inspired more at that age by Marlon Brando’s ‘Mutiny on the Bounty than Paul Gauguin’s post-impressionist paintings. Since I got scuba certified in the mid-1980s it’s the diving that’s been the main attraction.
Getting the 9-hour flight from San Francisco to the island of Tahiti with three others in late 2021, required that we be vaccinated, take a pre-flight COVID test and another when landing in Papeete, the Capital of French Polynesia.
After a brief stay in the bustling city of 25,000, we’re soon diving into the more laid back neighbouring island of Moorea whose green volcanic peaks have us thinking of Jurassic Park. But here the ancient reptiles from the age of dinosaurs are green and hawksbill sea turtles. Over days of diving, we’ll see many turtles and meet with Dr. Cecile Gaspar, director of Te mana o te Moana, the local turtle rescue center. She shows us some of her patients large and small in pens whose waters connect to the sea. About 75 percent of those rescued have been harpooned, as there is still a local black market for turtle meat. Among the 300 released back into the wild many are identified and tracked by observers using a kind of turtle facial recognition algorithm.
Most of her crew are off on the atoll of Tetiaroa. Once owned by Marlon Brando it’s now a top-end resort and a major site for monitoring nests and hatchlings. Their 52 percent female birth rate is not bad given that like many reptiles birth sex is determined by temperature and in today’s rapidly warming world the ratio has gone badly askew. New turtles hatched on beaches along with parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for example now turn out 99 percent female.
Waiting for a flight to Rangiroa, I go online and read of a new study that’s found half the world’s tropical coral reefs have died since I was born in the mid-20th century, 14 percent in the last decade. When I first snorkelled in the Florida Keys in the late 1960s the reef had close to 90 percent live coral cover. Today it’s around 3 percent.
An hour after takeoff in a twin-prop plane we’re crossing over a thin edge of breaking white surf, coral and sand, green Motus (islands) and the turquoise blue lagoon of Rangiroa, which, along with our next destination Fakarava are among the world’s largest atolls. They each have narrow passes to the sea in which billions of gallons of water rush in and out with the tides creating migratory channels for large and abundant marine wildlife. Rangiroa is about 50 miles long by 20 wide. Fakarava, more rectangular in shape, is 37 by 13. Rangiroa has 2,800 human residents, Fakarava around 1,000. Both low-lying atolls, along with 75 other atolls and “low islands” of the Tuamotus island group, are now threatened by rising sea levels.
Over the next nine days we’ll dive these dolphin and shark enhanced (not “infested”) waters doing back rolls off inflatables into the open passes, then heading along coral drop-offs, canyons and ledges to swim among an abundance of marine creatures.
Yet, on the three islands we dive, islands without the usual threats to coral health associated with polluted runoff, overfishing or major physical impacts I still note that a quarter to a third of the reef is either smothered in green leafy algae or has been reduced to rubble fields with occasional wedding cake white-bleached coral heads. My friends who dove here 25 years ago saw none of this.
It is the result of warming, acidifying seas, with warming water leading to global bleaching events that were first documented in 1997-98. Rangiroa was hit particularly hard in 1998. One study estimates some of its lost corals would take 100 years to recover if the ocean were not continuing to warm, which it is, due to climate change. Recurring bleaching makes it harder for corals to recover and more acidic seas make it more difficult for them and other shell-forming animals to capture calcium carbonate out of ocean water to build or rebuild their exoskeletons.
Because the Ocean absorbs 90 percent of human-generated heat and much of its carbon dioxide which is converted to carbonic acid, shifting seawater’s PH, our continued burning of fossil fuels is in effect denying future generations the reef’s productivity. This includes abundant fish, fish protein, the tourist dollars we spend as recreational divers (there are over 27 million certified divers worldwide), storm protection during intensifying hurricanes and typhoons, and just the sheer awe and wonder of a living reef.
During our final days, there are dolphins surfing and leaping in the waves. On our last dive, I try and remember everything I see over 55 minutes which is impossible; a giant Manta Ray, the barracudas and tuna swimming through the blue, the Picasso Triggerfish, parrotfish, stonefish, another Morey eel, a big Trident shell. We are watching a passing parade of hundreds of grey and blacktip sharks coming into the lagoon when a giant hammerhead, maybe 15-feet long with a huge dorsal fin scares the smaller 4-8-foot sharks onto the reef with us.
Still, I wonder how many such thrilling moments we’re leaving for future wonder seekers and explorers? Most marine science projections say that if we preserve 30 percent of the Ocean as fully protected reserves and rapidly transition off the burning of greenhouse gasses, we might still only see 10 percent of the world’s tropical coral reefs endure. I’ve witnessed corals bleached and dying in Florida, Hawaii, Fiji, Cuba and Australia and it enrages me. But anger alone is not the answer. They say you protect what you love. The dives on this trip have left me falling hard once again for the enchanting myriad magic of the reef.
I realize that the distance from these remote south Pacific atolls to the growing wildfires across my state or the centers of power in Washington, Bonn, New Delhi and Beijing is shrinking with every warming day. It’s not governments but citizens that may yet make the difference, including legions of scuba divers who can appreciate what’s at stake as we glide weightless and awe-struck through the coral heart of our blue planet.
David Helvarg is an author, Executive Director of Blue Frontier, an ocean conservation group and co-host of the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast.
This piece was prepared online by Panuruji Kenta, Publisher, SEVENSEAS Media