Crystal: [00:00:00] Want to know how YouTube can be a force for nature. Head on over to forces for nature.com and sign up to receive a free guide with practical actions that you can start taking today. I’m crystal Z Macelli and welcome to the forces for nature show.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the dooming, the new hero of these days? Do you feel like you it’s just one person can’t really make it. Forces for nature cuts through that negativity. In each episode, I interview somebody who is doing great things for animals and the environment we talked through, the problem they’re addressing the solution.

They have found what keeps them going, and we’ll leave you with practical action tips so that YouTube can become a force for nature. [00:00:45] Today’s guest is Francesca Verdi’s from reef renewal. Bonaire Bonaire is a small Caribbean island that hosts some of the most beautiful coral reefs. Although the waters surrounding the island are protected.

The reefs are not immune to the devastating impacts of climate change, warming waters, and ocean acidification in order to assist in their natural recovery Francesca and her team propagate new corals and transplant them into degraded reef ecosystems. These individuals then contribute to the diversity and the resilience of these areas.

With three quarters of the world’s coral reefs in danger of dying and disappearing. The combined efforts of reef, renewal, Bonaire, and others like them are key to their survival.

[00:01:30] Hi Francesca. Thank you so much for joining me on forces for nature. It’s so great to have you.

Francesca: [00:01:39] Thanks for having me. Nice to be here.

Crystal: [00:01:42] Can you give me a brief overview of what’s happening to reefs in the Caribbean and

Francesca: [00:01:46] around. That would say the majority of coral reefs worldwide are seriously damage. We’re talking about more than 75% of a coral reefs.

I would say there are dying stressors that are affecting the reef far multiples, and most of the time is the senior geo of all the stressors. There are global stressor and local stressor for exams. Climate change as a global stressor, which brings rising ocean [00:02:15] temperatures and ocean acidification over fishing worldwide, but also locally like destructive fishing, sedimentation, poor water, quality pollution, everything we throw in the water affects coral in different ways.

We bring more viruses and more bacteria and then coral like us can get sick.

Crystal: [00:02:37] You often hear about cases of coral bleaching in the news. Can you explain what that.

Francesca: [00:02:43] Chorus live in a certain region temperature. And, uh, they have some of the other relation with a little tiny algae. And if the temperatures is saying the appropriate range, they have a preferred light together where they help each other to grow and thrive.

But when [00:03:00] temperature goes up, Then this sort of relation get disturbed. And the result is that the chorus get rid of the algae. And so it starts to starve because in reality needs the algae as a source of food and energy. So this relation is very important for the corals and the algae provide. Callers to the corals.

And that’s why we refer to coral bleaching because when it gets rid of the algae, the chorus becomes white. The corner is not that yet. If conditions get back to normal, the chorus can regain his own algae and start the relation again. But of course, if the stressor persists for too long time, then the chorus would die.

This

Crystal: [00:03:42] has been a serious issue in [00:03:45] Australia’s great barrier reef for the last few.

Francesca: [00:03:47] Yeah, all the reefs are affected by crumbly chambers, some of them more than others. So for example, the great barrier reefs or also Florida Reese have experienced very, very mass bleaching event lately.

Crystal: [00:04:01] Now, if I happen to not live near an ocean, why should I care about reefs?

What do

Francesca: [00:04:08] they do for me? So we are already directly or indirectly affected by what is happening to corroborate. Reefs are incredibly by your diverse ecosystem, the support by your diversity and the life of more than 25% of all the Marine species known. Despite the fact that. Actually coral reefs cover [00:04:30] only 1% of the entire ocean surface.

So because they are so incredibly bio diverse, they also provide very important services worldwide to all of us. They support important commercial sectors like tourism. Tourism is one of the wars. Industry. So tourism contribute to the global economy, not only to the economy of small locations like Bonaire and Reese provide coastal protection to us, but to all of us provide biomedical compounds every day, a researcher fine on the road.

For example, new anticancer agents. And there were found from sponges [00:05:15] or painkillers from snail venom or supplements from algae. And there are so many species that still haven’t been discovered and many more biomedical compounds that haven’t been found yet

Crystal: [00:05:30] they can hold compounds that may help us get out of the next global panic.

Francesca: [00:05:34] Correct? Correct. We never know it was only species that haven’t been found yet.

Crystal: [00:05:39] And they’re the nursery for a lot of commercial fisheries, right. Where a lot of fish sweets start there.

Francesca: [00:05:46] Yeah, correct that. And that’s why, for example, a lot of people think, oh, but we don’t need to refinish this. But in reality, a lot of fish that you also catch somewhere far from the reef, they actually born on the reef or in the [00:06:00] mangrove areas.

They’re on, there’s more islands like Bonaire. So most of the commercial fish actually spent part of their life on the road.

Crystal: [00:06:09] Yeah. So if we lose it, then we’re going to be losing potentially some of our favorite fish

Francesca: [00:06:15] or we are in another, all our lives are connected. Whether you eat fish, whether you live on the island, whether you need a treatment for a specific sickness, or just, just for the beauty of it, I think is something you need.

Nature doesn’t really need us, but we strongly need nature. And this is why we should protect it.

Crystal: [00:06:34] In order to help protect reefs and also restore the ones that have been degraded, you helped to create refrain Newell Bonaire. Can you tell me a [00:06:45] little bit about this

Francesca: [00:06:46] program? Or referring your foundation.

One area is on nonprofit foundation. And our main goal is to assist the nature of the core, very of degraded reefs. And we do a through active coral restoration. We use two techniques to propagate thousands of chorus every years in coral nurseries. And then we open them back to the reef. I always say the coral reef restoration can not bring back to life that.

We don’t have a magic wand, but when combined with proper or proactive management, then restoration can have to spin up the nature of recovery or the reef. So is not per se the solution of the problem, but combined with proper action and [00:07:30] proper protection, I would say is an important part of the solution.

Coral restoration means I’m not allowing corporation to be so damaged and so degraded that they won’t be able to recover. So we’re kind of buying time through coral restoration.

Crystal: [00:07:46] And the number of corals you’re propagating and the area of reefs you’ve been able to restore have been steadily growing.

Since your start in 2012,

Francesca: [00:07:55] we started with just a few hundred corals in our nurseries. And now at any given time, you can count more than 15,000 cores growing in our nursery. We have a plant of back to the reef more than 35,000 corals. And we’re growing every [00:08:15] year and we’re growing more coral. So we’re growing as a foundation as much as we grow for us.

And yeah. So it’s nice to see how just starting from few chorus. Now we have almost, for example, 10,000 square meters of reef restored.

Crystal: [00:08:32] How do you grow a reef? How do you grow a coral reef? What are some of your methods?

Francesca: [00:08:38] Yes. So we use two different techniques. One is called fragmentation and the other one is larval propagation.

So very similarly to gardening on land. Although I always remind people, actually the corals are anymore. They are not plants. We can propagate corals using cotton. So that’s what we [00:09:00] do via fragmentation, but we can also propagate corals, assisting their reproduction. So we have the fertilization collecting eggs and sperms, and we facilitate the fertilization so we can rare core.

From very small, tiny larvae until they’re ready to settle on the reef. So I searched up feeding the reef with medians of larvae. Of course they are very small, so it takes longer time to see the results. But through Lavern propagation, we can work on large numbers and we can also increase the genetic diversity on the reef.

Crystal: [00:09:38] What’s the diversity of corals.

Francesca: [00:09:41] We are working overall on seven [00:09:45] different coral species. But as I mentioned before is important and not only on working on different species, but also on the genetic diversity, the chorus within the chorus pieces that we work on. So yeah, I always do this comparison. So imagine we are human being, we all belong to the same.

Animals pieces, but we all are unique and different. Right? You and I, we don’t look alike. Right. So we also have different strengths and weaknesses. So the same is for chorus is important to keep their genetic diversity high because they have. Strengths and weaknesses that actually might help them to receive, to withstand particular stressors.

Some of them might be stronger in [00:10:30] fighting against warmer water, temperature, or other are stronger towards diseases. So it’s very important to work on genetic diversity. Of course, for them. We are in this way, not only making the reef more able to withstand the stressors, but also more resilient, meaning that we are improving the capacity, recovering when, for example, something happened.

And I say, you reckon, right? What, they’re stronger. Also better able to recover after.

Crystal: [00:10:59] And speaking of resiliency, that leads into my next question regarding stressors. So ocean warming and ocean acidification are reasons that corals are dying in the first place among others. How can you grow new [00:11:15] ones and why would they survive as opposed to the wild ones that aren’t doing so well?

Francesca: [00:11:20] Yeah. So, as I said before, paramount is to reduce the stressors that are killing the rave. So this is the most important thing. Otherwise we won’t be able to save the reefs. However, through restoration, we can make sure to have a large amount of chorus here, available on the reef and with high genetic diversity.

So the population doesn’t get completely depleted. So. If the population gets to a point where there are not enough colonies, those colonies also wouldn’t be able to recover, even if we reduce the stress source. So coral restoration needs to work together with proper management and environmental [00:12:00] policies, right.

Crystal: [00:12:01] And in working with a bio-diverse selection of corals, I imagine you’re able to know which do best in varying situations. Yes.

Francesca: [00:12:08] Having worked with these corals and these different strains for almost 10 years now, we are kind of able to see already which one performed better than other and which size we keep collecting data and monitor chorus is very important for this reason, because the more we know how they perform, the more we can predict how they will perform.

And then in this way, we can adapt our restoration strategies based on this knowledge. Whether you want to put chorus, for example, to restore an area that is highly polluted or a more pristine area, then you can [00:12:45] decide, for example, which strands would you use. So that’s why it’s very important to get to know your chorus in a restoration plan.

Crystal: [00:12:54] I have heard some reforestation projects have been criticized for planting seedlings and that being their criteria for success, but not actually following up and seeing if those seedlings survive, which is the true measure of success. Do you monitor the survival rates of the corals that you play?

Francesca: [00:13:14] Yes, we monitor survival rate.

We monitoring our nursery. We monitor in our planting sites is very important because it’s the only way. To understand if we are successful or where we need to make adjustment. Also, we always [00:13:30] try to make this process more efficient. So it’s very important than almost as in an, a manufacturer process to follow the entire process, to kind of detect for example, bottlenecks and, and get better at it.

So we definitely need to collect data. Otherwise we’ll be just a guess and just a waste of resource.

Crystal: [00:13:51] What does the ecosystem start to look like after you plant the babies or the seedlings? I don’t know what to call them. Has it been long enough to see an ecosystem?

Francesca: [00:14:02] Yes. One of the most, I think rewarding experience was to witness our corresponding.

Again, the one that we all planted very young or ate a few years ago and they started spawning on their own. [00:14:15] That means that they are reproducing the means that they are kickstart the recovery process. Also reefs there on nearby non-necessary. Only they are planting sites, but also reefs that might be also located in meters and meters far away.

So this is where nature start working again on its own. And this is kind of the goal of our project. So that’s very rewarding on top of it. We also collect data regarding fish populations. Thanks also to research. And partnership with the research Institute that we have. And just recently, hopefully will be published.

Soon. We were comparing, for example, fish book relation or invertebrate population on our side to show how surely they bring in chorus back to reef also helps the recovery of fish populations.

[00:15:00] Crystal: [00:15:00] Which in turn helps the fisheries of the coastal

Francesca: [00:15:03] systems. Absolutely. The one, when we work on education outreach on the island, we always love to have fishermen there and show that we were together.

We’re not working against each other, actually the more corals and the more Reeves theories we have, the more fish we have, which is a source of food for the island and support the local economy. So absolutely we need to work together. Your

Crystal: [00:15:25] organization is just three people strong. How do you handle all that goes into this initiative?

Francesca: [00:15:33] Yeah, we are a very small foundation, just a three staff member now, but we get a lot of support by the community locally and [00:15:45] internationally. We have seven local dive shops supporting and many tourists and local volunteers, which are very passionate, dedicated to this project. They come here, they fall in love with our project.

And they inspire us and push us to do more and more every day. So I think they are the real source of energy or engine of this project.

Crystal: [00:16:08] So you have the dive shops helped to provide the mentors.

Francesca: [00:16:12] Yeah to volunteer for us. You need to be a diver. And they, yesterday we train our volunteers, we train the instructors, some of the instructors that were for these dive shops and they train tourists and locals to become volunteers.

So we don’t [00:16:30] have to, let’s say spend time training people, but we actually get right away the manpower and this help us, you know, to reach out to way more people that we will be able to reach out. Just we three stuff, members, right? Live shops are everywhere. They get in contact with hundreds of tourists every day.

So they are our center of education and formation, our first point of contact with the community.

Crystal: [00:16:57] Can you tell me about a moment when you said to yourself this, this is why I do it. So a success story or a proud moment?

Francesca: [00:17:06] Yeah, I would say for sure what I mentioned before this flooring of the, the chorus, but also I [00:17:15] think when we started having meeting with our.

Trained volunteers or local, they shop and see suddenly maybe 50 people participating or organizing event with 100 diverse altogether working on a nursery. And that it was very rewarding because we started this project. With almost no support. People were very skeptical regarding coral restoration. And we were a very small team.

We’re still very small team, but seeing so many people believe in this project was very rewarding,

Crystal: [00:17:50] including the fishermen. You have them on board.

Francesca: [00:17:53] Yes, absolutely. We, we have a very good relation with them and they understand what we’re doing and [00:18:00] we’re all working together for bony our nature. No.

Crystal: [00:18:03] One of my favorite parts about this show is being able to leave the listener with things that they can do to help.

So you mentioned that people can come and be volunteers for you. If there are divers, what else can someone do to help reefs in general?

Francesca: [00:18:22] I would say most important thing, promote awareness, learn more about coral reefs. They are incredible diversity. And talk about the educate, the people that are around you and in your life.

Also vote for people that will have, for example, nature protection or restoration. In their political [00:18:45] agenda. That’s very important. We cannot care about nature and the forget it, when is the moment on voting somebody? So we definitely need to keep that in mind. If you’re more of an action person, you can become a volunteer for project like us.

And yeah, just, just me aware of how we small adjustment to our everyday life. We can actually have a big impact on the reef on nature in general.

Crystal: [00:19:11] Another thing that comes to mind for me is using reef safe. Sunscreen. What is the difference between regular sunscreen and reef safe?

Francesca: [00:19:21] Sunscreen? Yeah. There are other components and ingredients of the two different group of sun sprain.

They like to [00:19:30] distinguish ink chemicals on screen. Mineral sunscreen. So the good ones would be the one. There are zinc, for example, bays and no have chemical compounds that actually kill the reef. And there is a long list, unfortunately, or chemical compounds that kill the reef and people can find it easily on any, you know, just Google it on any website.

And because it’s proved that these ingredients kill the reef. Yeah. Sometime people think, oh, but it’s just a little bit, it wouldn’t affect the reef. But first of all, we need to think that we are a lot of people getting in the ocean and corals live very close to shore. So although the ocean is very big, we are actually having an [00:20:15] impact on the shallow water chorus, and also scientists prove that just very, very small concentration.

We’re talking about a drop in a Olympic pool size would kill a coral. So. Thinking about all the things. When you come and visit a place like Bonaire and your visit to our coral reef, try to practice using safe sunscreen.

Crystal: [00:20:37] So in the show notes, I’ll put a list of the components that you should and should not look out for regarding the sunscreen, because you might have every intention to protect reefs and not realize that what you’re putting on your skin.

Is

Francesca: [00:20:52] harming them. They actually, almost all the comics are very badly affecting the reef. So [00:21:00] we kind of needs to use the sunscreens there, take Tonya or zinc based, which are the ones that leave us all white and go see. But that’s why, because they stick to our skin and that actually learns or get released in the ocean.

That’s why they have a less impact on the reef.

Crystal: [00:21:17] I have used some that blend in better than others. So you don’t necessarily have to look like Casper the ghost on your beach days. Now also, despite looking like hard rocks, corals are very fragile and just stepping on them or putting your anchor on them can kill them, correct.

Or at least damage years worth of growth.

Francesca: [00:21:38] Oh, yeah. Like corals in reality are colonies or very tiny, tiny, tiny polyps. So [00:21:45] every time we touch one of them or just step on that, it’s like the size of a, even smaller than an end or a bug. So imagine stepping on something like that, you’re already killing the Polish.

So every time we brush a quarrel with stand on it, we’re it. Hundreds probably of polyps, um, the entire coral colonies. And unfortunately chorus looked like rocks a little bit and people don’t realize that. And so you see a lot of people standing, there are people that don’t know and, and it’s, and you can see it.

They’re totally not aware. As soon as you tell them, they move away and they actually apologize. So that’s why I’m saying it. Location and promoting awareness in particular with people that [00:22:30] live far from here is critical sometime, you know, promoting doing presentation here and promoting the refer awareness here is sort of preaching to the.

Yeah. And that’s why my Ashley, my, my goal is to reach out to all the people that you were mentioned before they want to live far away, then maybe don’t visit the reef. But like I said, we’re, their action is still impacting coral reefs

Crystal: [00:22:54] and also don’t buy coral souvenirs or coral jewelry.

Francesca: [00:22:59] Oh yeah, absolutely.

Francesca.

Crystal: [00:23:01] This has been really interesting. Thank you so much for all that you do. You’re making a difference. Besides just for their beauty, coral research, important for all of us to protect because of the ecosystem services [00:23:15] they provide directly or indirectly. And we may be harming them without even realizing it.

Another point I want to add about that is about the aquarium trade. If you have an aquarium in your home, be diligent about sourcing your corals and fish and its other inhabitants ethically verify that none have been taken from the war. With a little forethought, we can be sure that our choices and our actions, while at the beach or far away, aren’t inadvertently doing harm to these gorgeous important ecosystems.

Don’t forget to go to forces for nature.com and sign up to receive email shownotes action tips and a free guide to help you start taking practical actions today. Do you know someone else who would enjoy this episode? I would be so [00:24:00] grateful if you would share it. Hit me up on Instagram and Facebook. And let me know what actions you have been taking.

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