The shimmering beauty of a tropical
coral reef submerged in a sapphire sea is often equated with paradise.
But there's a darker side to the idyll, writes Mary Colwell.
Coral
reefs "are beautiful places", says Ken Johnson, a researcher
specialising in coral at the Natural History Museum in London. They
have "complex, three dimensional structures like cliffs and turrets"
with a huge diversity of life. "We see schools of fish and many types of
corals, and overall the sense is of colour and movement."
Reefs
often surround coral islands where white sands are lapped by gentle
waves - R M Ballantyne captured this idyll in his 19th Century novel The
Coral Island, a tale about 3 boys who are sailing through the Pacific
Ocean. "At last we came among the Coral Islands of the Pacific;
and I shall never forget the delight with which I gazed - when we
chanced to pass one - at the pure, white, dazzling shores, and the
verdant palm-trees, which looked bright and beautiful in the sunshine.
And often did we three long to be landed on one, imagining that we
should certainly find perfect happiness there!"
Other writers, such as James Montgomery, saw virtuous industry on a
reef, where millions of animals and plants work tirelessly together to
create a harmonious whole - a fitting model for human civilisation. He
captured this notion in his poem Pelican Island in 1828. "With
simplest skill, and toil unweariable, / No moment and no movement
unimproved, / Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread, / To swell
the heightening, brightening gradual mound, / By marvellous structure
climbing tow'rds the day."
Every tiny polyp of the coral and all the attendant creatures are
involved. "Paradise gradually developed from the toil, as they called
it," says Ralph Pite, professor of English literature at Bristol
University, "just as the successful British society and great empire
developed out of the toil of individual workers in their factories and
homes."
Science, however, has prompted a reality check on our
image of paradise, which is not all it seems. A coral reef can also be
seen as a wall of mouths. Each tiny polyp is a predator that can extrude
its stomach on to neighbours if they get too close and digest them in
situ. It can create a web of slime to trap small creatures that float by
or grab them with tentacles and drag the victim to its stomach.
Humans may be too large for such techniques, but many a ship,
including Captain Cook's HMS Endeavour, has foundered as hard coral
skeletons, made up of calcium carbonate, have ripped through their
wooden hulls.
So dangerous were coral reefs to shipping, that in
the 1830s the Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, was sent to map
coral islands in the Pacific to help reduce the damage. Darwin's first
book, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, published in 1842,
was on the mechanism of their formation.
As
more was discovered about coral reefs, especially with the advent of
diving, deeper canyons were explored and a new image emerged.
"The
coral reef starts to be similar to the dangerous urban spaces of the
Victorian world where down alleys and back streets, in dark corners, all
sorts of dangers might lurk," says Ralph Pite.
Then between 1946
and 1958 a new use was found for a series of coral islands surrounding a
lagoon in the Pacific - Bikini Atoll became the site of 23 nuclear
tests. A bomb detonated there was 1,000 times more powerful than the one
dropped on Hiroshima. The islands remain uninhabitable today.
Nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll, 1946
Now our view of coral reefs has
evolved again and they have emerged as fragile, vulnerable places
struggling to survive the onslaught of the 21st Century. Threatened by
climate change, overfishing, ocean acidification, pollution and
physical destruction, they are disappearing from the warm seas of the
world.
And the prospect of losing them has inspired not only scientists to take action, but also artists.
Since
2006, huge sculptures, designed to give corals a new place to live,
have been placed on the seabed off the coasts of Mexico, Grenada and the
Bahamas.
One is of a group of bankers kneeling down, their
briefcases by their sides and their heads buried in the sand. Another
shows a man typing at a desk. A third is of a crowd of people of
different ages standing close together with their eyes shut as though
deep in thought or prayer. Then there is the figure of a young girl,
arms outstretched, as though embracing the ocean. They are the work of
41-year-old artist and diver Jason deCaires Taylor. Sculptures
are usually unchanging - locked in stone, metal or wood - but these are
unusual. They are designed to be colonised by sea creatures and as
time passes their surfaces are becoming increasingly encrusted by
shellfish and coral.
"The coral applies the paint, the fish
supply the atmosphere and the water provides the mood," says Taylor. In
years to come they will be engulfed by life in the sea, with just the
vestige of the original form left. "The evolution of the sculptures is
fundamental to their existence… It's creating its own form and own shape
with just the silhouette of the human form remaining."
As a
child, Taylor saw coral reefs in Thailand and Malaysia, but "many of
these places now don't exist," he says. "And to see them diminish and
disintegrate so rapidly is what's inspired me to take action."
Since
Jason deCaires Taylor was born, in 1974, about one-quarter of coral
reefs worldwide have been damaged beyond repair, and another two-thirds
are under serious threat.
"By creating an artificial reef, not
only would it provide a substrate for marine life it would also draw
visitors away from natural reefs, which is an increasing problem in some
parts of the world.
"I hope they'll eventually just disappear into the reef system," he says.
"Coral
reefs are the first areas that our planet might lose in the next 50
years so I certainly want to bring more attention to them."
No comments:
Post a Comment