My Action Plan to Help Solve Coral Bleaching
By Coral bleaching is a phenomenon that occurs when coral reefs become stressed due to changes in their environment, such as rising ocean temperatures, pollution, or other factors.
When corals become stressed, they expel the symbiotic algae that live inside their tissues, which provide them with food and color.
Without these algae, the corals turn white or pale, hence the term “bleaching.”
Coral bleaching is a significant problem because it can lead to the death of entire coral colonies, which in turn has negative impacts on the marine ecosystem and the communities that depend on it. Coral reefs are important habitats for a wide variety of marine life, including fish, sea turtles, and sharks, and they also provide important ecosystem services such as protecting coastlines from storms and erosion.
The primary cause of coral bleaching is rising ocean temperatures, which is due to climate change. When ocean temperatures rise, corals become stressed and expel their symbiotic algae, leading to bleaching. Other factors that can contribute to coral bleaching include pollution, overfishing, and destructive fishing practices, which can weaken corals and make them more susceptible to disease.
The effects of coral bleaching can be devastating, and scientists are working to better understand the causes of this phenomenon and develop strategies to mitigate its impacts. One promising approach is the use of Biorock, a technique that involves using low-voltage electrical currents to stimulate the growth of coral reefs. By promoting the growth of new coral colonies, Biorock can help to restore damaged reefs and mitigate the impacts of coral bleaching.
It is important for individuals and communities to reduce their impact on the environment and support initiatives promoting coral reef health. This can include reducing carbon emissions, reducing pollution, supporting sustainable fishing practices, and investing in renewable energy sources such as solar power. By working together to address the causes of coral bleaching, we can help to protect these important ecosystems for future generations. Coral Bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef | Years of Living Dangerously
My Goal: Team One, Stage One
My goal is to stop the use of sunscreens with extremely harsh chemicals in them like Titanium Dioxide, Oxybenzone (noaa researchers, published December 2013). My first step to making this a possibility is to sort out the good from the bad, figuring out what chemicals cause coral bleaching and what ones are harmless to coral and do more research about better sunscreens that are not harmful. My second step would be to contact Martin Zavan and come to a deal to draft and edit an article about the harm chemicals can cause. After the article is finished, we submit it to all local newspapers and newspapers in towns around Rockhampton and on the internet and hopefully we start gaining traction and attention from other climate change activists who will also spread the word about the article.
Team Two, Stage Two
Now that we have way more readers, we can get a climate change activist Assocation like Greenpeace to stand with us and support us by giving us access to better resources and sharing the article all over their social media platforms gaining us even more readers. By now we have started to make a difference, a tiny one but a difference, nonetheless. Now that we are a little more well known we can start adding people who have more background knowledge than we do on the topic, that person will be Corinne Le Quéré a scientist who research the carbon cycle(name of her research Global Carbon Project), so with her help we could start to research ways to reverse the bleaching with the knowledge that we already have on how sometimes in very rare situations when the coral is able to reattain its source of nutrients and come back alive and better than ever and apply that knowledge to the carbon cycle.
This graph shows just how much sunscreen ends up in the ocean each year, now just think about how much of that sunscreen is harmful to coral reefs.
Team One Short Term (first 6 months)
In the first six months we have accomplished publishing our research article on what sunscreens are harmful to the coral. We have convinced some small local businesses to stop selling those harmful sunscreens and they have switch over to strictly non-toxic to coral sunscreens in their shops
Team One Long Term (after a year and a half)
We have started a blog and every month we do an update on how much the coral has changed from stopping our use of harmful chemicals in the sunscreens. Rockhampton and the towns surrounding it have all stopped selling the harmful sunscreens and we still do the monthly updates on the coral. We got brand deals from promoting non-toxic to coral sunscreens.
Team Two Short Term (first 6 months)
We managed to get Greenpeace to support our research. We have some major celebrities promoting our articles which has really helped us boost our petition to ban Titanium Dioxide, Oxybenzone sunscreens on all beaches in Australia. We have continued our research on applying the carbon cycle to coral bleaching.
Team Two Long Term (after a year and a half)
Our research is finished, and we have had Greenpeace and our own publishing company publish our research. We have started another research project about trying to find the best non-toxic and non-harmful coral sunscreen but, we ultimately always found something wrong with the sunscreen, so we started making our own formula. With the money we earned we started more research team in countries all over the world including Canada, USA, all of Asia and Africa.
Why I Chose My Team
Martin Zavan
-Access to Greenpeace resources
-Used to be an editor and a Jounalist so he could draft the article about my research
-Has an online following
-Actually, cares about the climate issues in Australia
-Has experience when it comes to being an activist
-He is from Australia, so we get the inside scoop on how much people genuinely care about coral bleaching
-Since he’s Australian we can understand how to get the attention of Australians
Corinne Le Quéré
-Attended the University of Montreal where she got a B.Sc. in physics
-She also went to McGill University to get a M.S in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
-She has a PHD in oceanography
-She is a professor at UK’s University of East Anglia
-Her research on the carbon cycle
-She was a Nobel Prize winner in 2007 (By Tshiamo Mobe April 11, 2022)
-She is a very known climate scientist (she is very smart)
-She was on the Reuters Hot List
-She in general is a very well accomplished scientist in her field of work
Our Budget
A rough estiment of our budget in a year would be $1200 the most we would have to pay for would be getting published in the newspapers and on the internet and if I cannot work out a deal with my teams it is their pay.
Sources
The study was published in the December 2013 issue of Ecotoxicology
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/women-scientists-climate-change-solutions-stem/
By Tshiamo Mobe
April 11, 2022
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/climate-change-scientists-lequere/
By Maurice Tamman
Published April 21, 2021, 11 a.m. GMT
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/15/6882
Published: 27 July 2021
By
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