Finding hope for the ocean in action and innovation

Despite the threats of pollution, diseases, invasive species, and rising temperatures caused by climate change, marine biologist Kristen Marhaver PhD still has hope for the world’s coral reefs.

“'We used to think the ocean was too big to hurt,'” she said to Groton students during a special mini Circle Talk in the Sackett Forum on February 20, quoting a mentor, the acclaimed marine biologist Nancy Knowlton. “'Now we think it’s too big to help.' So what if we could actually help species survive this? What if we could actually protect them? What if we could actually establish and enforce good legal protections, restore things actively instead of just hoping it all grows back and innovate? It’s already happening. In all of this mess, scientists have moved from reaction and observation to taking action and innovating.” 

Dr. Marhaver’s path to a renowned career in ocean conservation is admittedly a non-traditional one. A native of landlocked Kansas, she studied applied biology at Georgia Tech and earned her PhD in marine biology at the University of California at San Diego. She eventually settled on the island of Curaçao in the Southern Caribbean. 

“I never set out to be a marine biologist living in the Caribbean,” she said, “but this happened to me because I kept doubling down on things that I love.” 

Chief among those things, at least in her professional life, are coral. Through photos and stunning, rarely shared videos of her research in Curaçao—where her official title is senior scientist at CARMABI (Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity) Marine Research Station—Dr. Marhaver explained the basics of coral reproduction and its lifecycle, and how studying centuries-old specimens can still sometimes come down to a once-a-year opportunity.  

“This process is so incredibly difficult and it’s so slow—it took a thousand years to grow this reef of corals,” she said, pointing to a photo of her dwarfed by a coral giant. “And when we’re trying to study it, we’re basically playing this sudden death game. Many of these corals only reproduce one time per year, and if we mess up, then we have to wait a year to try again. No pressure. 

“Some people do not enjoy this kind of science, I should say,” Dr. Marhaver added. “It takes a certain sort of wacky wackiness and tenacity to be like, let’s do something where if we mess up, we have to wait a year.” 

Like many species, coral has been threatened by myriad factors in recent years, both manmade and otherwise. 

“From protecting shorelines, to providing habitat for fish, to being a place where we discover new medicines, to their cultural value, coral reefs are worth trillions of dollars,” Dr. Marhaver said. “We have, as you may be aware, taken a lot of this for granted. So in the last say fifty to a hundred years, here’s how we sort of treated our local neighborhood coral reefs: We took the fish out, added sewage in, added fertilizer in, chemical pollution, oil, dry-cleaning chemicals. 

“Then there’s biological pollution, meaning invasive species or diseases developing on the coast. Plus bulldozing and dredging and dragging sand all around, making big beaches, creating all sorts of big sediment plumes, and then just physically crushing them with anchors and dredgers and bulldozers and boats and fins. Not a great time to be a coral, to be honest. So this whole list goes on and you go plus climate change on top of that, you can imagine a lot of these factors interact. We’ve made the whole system incredibly, incredibly vulnerable to climate change.” 

Complicating matters further, Dr. Marhaver said, were misinformation paid for by the oil industry creating early doubt about climate change—featuring some of the same minds that promised tobacco was perfectly safe—and a scientific community that either shied away from publicizing its research or was woefully incapable of doing so. 

“In the old-timey days a couple decades ago, as a scientist, you were not really supposed to speak to the public,” she said. “So here we have paid interests creating a bunch of doubt, and scientists with garbage communication skills not supposed to be speaking to the public. Guess which side won?” 

Despite all this, Dr. Marhaver says the tide is beginning to turn, giving her hope.

For one thing, she said, it’s very difficult to wipe out an undersea species—only a couple dozen have gone extinct—so coral stand a better chance than some counterparts on dry land.

“It’s really, really difficult to get the last one of anything because the ocean is so big and so deep, so almost nothing is extinct,” she said, “which means if we do the right thing, we can get almost everything back.”

Natural resource protection efforts are on the rise as well, aided by satellite and other technology that allows tracking of violations in real time. Renewable energy is coming online faster than predicted, Dr. Marhaver said, allowing for a shift away from oil production that could harm the environment. And, unlike their counterparts from a few decades ago, today’s scientists are comfortable talking about their research, and have the communication skills (Dr. Marhaver is also a TED Talk senior fellow) to do so compellingly.

Following her talk, Dr. Marhaver answered questions and chatted with students in the Forum. The next morning, she spoke with biology, ecology, and environmental science classes, further educating and inspiring our community. 

“This is just the beginning,” she said. “The earth needs your character, scholarship, leadership and service. So who’s ready to join?”