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Juli Berwald - Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs

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Juli Berwald Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs
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Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs: summary, description and annotation

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Coral reefs are a microcosm of our planet: extraordinarily diverse, deeply interconnected, and full of wonders. When theyre thriving, these fairy gardens hidden beneath the oceans surface burst with colour and life. They sustain entire ecosystems and protect vulnerable coasts. Corals themselves are evolutionary marvels that build elaborate limestone formations from their collective skeletons, broker symbiotic relationships with algae, and manufacture their own fluorescent sunblock. But corals across the planet are in the middle of an unprecedented die-off, beset by warming oceans, pollution, human damage, and a devastating pandemic. Juli Berwald fell in love with coral reefs as a marine biology student, entranced by their beauty and complexity. Alarmed by their peril, she traveled the world to discover how to prevent their loss. She met scientists and activists operating in emergency mode, doing everything they can think of to save coral reefs before they disappear forever. She was Amazed by the ingenuity of these last ditch efforts, she joined in rescue missions, unexpected partnerships, risky experiments, and rebuilt reefs with rebar and zip ties. Life on the Rocks is an inspiring, lucid, meditative ode to the reefs and the undaunted scientists working to save them against almost impossible odds. As she also attempts to help her daughter in her own struggle with mental illness, Berwald explores what it means to keep fighting a battle whose outcome is uncertain. She contemplates the inevitable grief of climate change and the beauty of small victories.

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ALSO BY JULI BERWALD Spineless The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of - photo 1
ALSO BY JULI BERWALD

Spineless:

The Science of Jellyfish and
the Art of Growing a Backbone

Riverhead Books An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC penguinrandomhousecom - photo 2

Riverhead Books An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC penguinrandomhousecom - photo 3

Riverhead Books

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright 2022 by Juli Berwald Penguin supports copyright Copyright fuels - photo 4

Copyright 2022 by Juli Berwald

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:

Coral Restoration Is Now lyrics copyright 2018 by Scott F. Heron and Nathan Cook. Used with permission.

Image credits: FUNDEMAR/Sergio D. Guendulain-Garca.

Riverhead and the R colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Berwald, Juli, author.

Title: Life on the rocks : building a future for coral reefs / Juli Berwald.

Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021026535 (print) | LCCN 2021026536 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593087305 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593087329 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Coral reefs and islands. | Coral reef conservation.

Classification: LCC QE565 .B465 2022 (print) | LCC QE565 (ebook) | DDC 333.95/53153dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026535

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026536

Cover design: Grace Han

Cover art: Andriy Onufriyenko

Book design by Daniel Lagin, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt

pid_prh_6.0_139666847_c0_r0

For Isy and Ben

Contents

PART I.
Reef Futures

PART II.
What Keeps a Reef Together

PART III.
Florida

PART IV.
Sulawesi

PART V.
Bali

PART VI.
Dominican Republic

PART VII.
Washington, D.C.

PART VIII.
Australia, from Afar

Part I Reef Futures 1 Fairy Land of Fact It was love at first sight for - photo 5
Part I
Reef Futures
1 Fairy Land of Fact It was love at first sight for my part anyway Im pretty - photo 6
1
Fairy Land of Fact

It was love at first sight, for my part anyway. Im pretty confident the corals felt nothing more than the waft of a current rolling off my flapping fins as I struggled to control my movements. But from the moment I dipped my eyes beneath the surface of the balmy Red Sea and kicked a few meters out to the reef, I was smitten. I had entered a world in which the sea gods and goddesses had conspired to mastermind a magnificent playground and then outfitted it in extraordinary decor. Awash in color and texture, the reef was beyond Baroque, more complex than Gothic. It was floral, it was animal, and it was mineral too. Each delicate petal and tendril was a revelation; each filigree and lattice an astonishment. It wasnt just my ineptness with a snorkel that literally choked me up. I felt emotional, overwhelmed by the simple recognition that this coral reef existed on the same planet as me.

What really made the reef so resplendent was that there was no sea divinity behind its magnificence. It was, as William Saville-Kent, the Great Barrier Reefs first Western biographer, wrote in 1893, a fairy land of fact. The fairyland was the accumulated work over the eons of hundreds of thousands of tiny animalsmost no bigger than the tip of a penciland the symbiotic algae that lived tattooed in their tissue. These creatures had none of the organs that we recognize as animal-like, no limbs or eyes or even brains with which to concoct this symphony of splendor. And yet, they had extraordinary capabilities. They were architects who designed the intricate structures of the reef. They were manufacturers who created the rock scaffolding of their homes. They were chemists who made their own protective sunscreen and complicated venoms. They were entrepreneurs who traded in the currency of nitrogen and carbon. They were soldiers who defended their territory from encroaching parties by firing poison-laden darts with unparalleled speed. They were hunters who used those very same extraordinary weapons to sustain themselves.

What was even more inconceivable was that these tiny beings were so much more than just their individual powers. And it was for the collective that my admiration of corals blossomed into true love. They were generous, sharing their nutrition with their neighbors through stomachs that were physically connected together. They were hospitable, building caves and dens for fish and crabs and octopuses and sponges. They were sensual. In the light of the moon, they spawned as one, releasing eggs and sperm upward in a deluge of synchronized hope for the future.

In the years following that first amorous dive on the reef, I changed my life in very significant ways, as one does for a true love. As often happens with passion, it didnt always go smoothly. But after many missteps, I did go to graduate school to study marine biology. Once there, I signed up for every chance I could to dive on other reefs: the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and on the reefs surrounding Bora Bora, Jamaica, Maui, and the tip of Baja California. When I tucked my head underwater, the rush of love for the coral reef would always wash over me. Again and again, I was enthralled and entranced by the corals, by their creativity and synergy, by their beauty and complexity.

Until I wasnt.

More than a decade ago, I fell off the academic path and slipped into a career as a freelance science writer mostly working on textbooks, although I occasionally wrote for magazines and websites. My grandmother, who was in her midnineties, decided to throw a big party for herself because, as she wisely recognized, you cant take it with you. She invited our extended family to join her on a Caribbean cruise. While I knew this voyage would be different from sailing on a research vessel, I was eager to see the vast horizon again and for the chance to dive beneath the turquoise waters in the Bahamas and swim around the coral gardens. This cruise company owned an entire island there and we were promised a day of snorkeling.

Aside from being at sea, the cruise was, as expected, strikingly different from life on a research vessel. On scientific cruises, work continued around the clock, which usually meant no more than a few hours of sleep at a time and a constant feeling of grogginess. Here, the ships staff built a schedule to maximize our enjoyment of various shore activities. We sailed at night, rocked to sleep by the gentle roll of the waves, and awoke to a fresh new vista ripe for adventure each morning. The day we docked on the private island, I pulled back the blinds to the sight of a stunning double rainbow that ended at the beach. How they managed that feat, I had no idea.

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