Alan J Powderham - At the Heart of the Coral Triangle: Celebrating Biodiversity

1. Chapter 1
   Seascapes

2. Chapter 2
   Fish portraits

3. Chapter 3
   Invertebrates

4. Chapter 4
   Predation

5. Chapter 5
   Reproduction

6. Chapter 6
   Behaviour

7. Chapter 7
   Symbiosis

8. Chapter 8
   Reptiles

9. Chapter 9
   Conservation

The authors have donated 10% of their royalties to Conservation Internationals Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI). Learn about the CTIs work to combat threats from climate change and unsustainable fishing to support this extraordinary environment at https://www.conservation.org/projects/coral-triangle-initiative

Life has many interweaving journeys and, in a way, this book is the culmination of one that started over 40 years ago in the Caribbean. Although the Caribbean has considerably less marine biodiversity than the Indo-Pacific region, in those days its coral reefs were thriving with little hint of climate change and the crises to come. The book itself touches a more timeless journey, commencing with visions of pristine coral reefs and concludes with a primeval driver in their evolutiona volcano. In this, it reaches beyond a contemporary perspective into the dimension of deep time and how the very existence of the Coral Triangle commenced over 20 million years ago.

The book's internal journey is set out in nine chapters, each with a leading theme in which each subject may be read as self-contained, but which also interrelates between entries and across the chapters.

From the Caribbean, my journey took me on to the Red Sea, followed by the Maldives and eventually to the Coral Triangle in 2004. Each region brought its own wonders, but the experience of the Coral Triangle was immediately breath-taking. Once discovered, I have never wished to dive anywhere else. With such a spectacular range of species spread across an area of 6 million square kilometres, there was no risk of a lack of variety. Yet, retracing those initial steps in the Caribbean prompted a reminder of how easy it is to forget how alien the marine environment is especially to non-divers. With adequate training, one may enter this strange world for the first time with comparative ease. However, it is quite another challenge to really appreciate its wonders. They were far from revealed on my first dive back in 1978. Then, the novelty was all about just being immersed in the bizarre act of breathing underwater. The experience was physical and inward rather than about the environment. It was still exhilarating, but was tempered by the concern of whether I would be able to manage the cumbersome technology of scuba. The heavy tank combined with the weight of the other equipment was impressive. I wondered whether the weight belt with several more kilogrammes of lead was really necessary. I was amazed to find how hard it was to get below the surface when I had half expected to sink like a stone. Looking back thousands of dives later, I realise how fortunate I have been to enjoy this extended journey. In those early days, we did not have the integrated sophistication of modern equipment, so there was a steep learning curve to achieve neutral buoyancy. That achieved, I took up underwater photography later that year. Another key difference was the medium of film. This meant that there was a maximum of 36 shots per dive and less if a partly finished roll was carried over to the next dive. This imposed the need to make each shot really count. At the time, it felt like an unwelcome constraint, particularly when interesting encounters occurred after the last shot was taken. This happened more often than one might expect. The fish seemed to instinctively know when there was no film left, so I soon learnt to keep a couple of shots right to the end of each dive. Curiously, the incidence of late encounters then noticeably reduced. Fish are intelligent, but I do not think that they count the shots. Rather, I suspect they rely on body language, which must change when one has genuinely run out of film. In retrospect, I now appreciate how important that limitation imposed by film proved to be. It taught me to be patient and relaxed and honed my skills in observation. This brought real benefits not only to my photography but also to the overall experience of diving. With modern digital cameras, it is quite easy to take hundreds of shots during just one dive. There is a risk of missing the real experience by spending most of a dive peering through a lens or checking the results on the back-screen display.

It may come as a surprise that you can actually get quite cold when diving in the tropics. This particularly applies where upwelling currents bring cold water from the depths. Water is 800 times denser than air and its physical properties present plenty of challenges, especially to the underwater photographer. The thermal conductivity of water is 20 times that of air making it a very effective heat sink. This, combined with evaporative cooling while breathing compressed air through a regulator, causes continual heat loss during a dive.