UCPH student’s photos of dying coral reef go global

The colour of corals on a reef should not be pale or transparent like a jellyfish. If nothing is wrong, they should have clear colours. They are either dead or dying and they do not get their beautiful colours back unless they grow again by catching particles and nutrients from the water.

The race is not over, but corals are organisms that grow incredibly slowly. So there is a big discussion now on whether they can now also adapt to rapid man-made changes in the aquatic environment

Ole Brodnicke, exchange student

Ole Brodnicke is a master’s student in biology at the University of Copenhagen and is currently on an exchange programme at James Cook University (JCU) in Australia for one semester. In his spare time, he also studies a coral reef that has been bleached several times: The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef.

The pictures of the pale and lifeless coral reefs of this Australian summer have led to alarming headlines in the world’s media.

“The reef will not be able to recover” state articles in the German Der Spiegel and American Fox News.

Great Barrier Reef bleached for two summers in a row

The Great Barrier Reef runs for a stretch of 1,500 km in a north-south direction off Eastern Australia, and this is where JCU is located and where Ole Brodnicke is going to study marine biology while on exchange.

In his spare time, he is on a research project for an agency of the Australian government that is seeking to understand the diseases that often kill off the corals after a period with hot surface water .

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The corals cannot cope with surface water becoming too hot, and now is the first time they have been bleached two summers in a row.

The race is not over for the corals, but…

The corals may recover from one bleaching, but the healing process takes ten years, and this has given rise to alarming stories of the huge reef’s imminent mass death, when the corals may no longer be able to recover from a bleaching.

Ole Brodnicke does not want to make out that the problems for the reef are less than they are, but he makes a few scientific additions to the unfortunate effect of global warming on the reef.

“The race is not over, but corals are organisms that grow incredibly slowly, so there is a big discussion about whether they can now also adapt to the rapid man-made changes in the aquatic environment,” he says.

The reef will turn into something different in the future

He believes that they will be able to adapt. But there is a maybe. And it will be in a completely different way than they do today.

“There are about 600 coral species on The Great Barrier Reef, so there will definitely be some of those that will survive the changes. The coral itself also originates from a warmer period in the history of the earth, and they have been through alot, so they are robust,” says Ole Brodnicke.

There is no doubt, however, that if you want to see a ‘real coral reef’ in full bloom with their almost neon colors, which most of us know from documentaries on television, you have to hurry.

Only ‘pockets’ of original coral reef left

He explains that if you want to see what the whole Great Barrier Reef looked like 20 years ago, you can still find some sections, or you can go out to New Caledonia in an easterly direction from Australia.

Photo taken in an area of ​the ​Great Barrier Reef where the corals still radiate with health, as the whole reef did just 20 years ago. Photo: Gergerly Torda.

This is how fast climate change is taking place. The original Great Barrier Reef in full bloom is a thing of the past.

“They say that there will be a so-called phase shift from a coral-dominated ecosystem to a less coral-dominated, which will eventually turn into a complete algae or seaweed-dominated system,” says Ole Brodnicke.

Fieldwork is amazing

Ole Brodnicke joined the Great Barrier Reef research project because he wanted to do some volunteer work related to his studies, and because he appeared dedicated.

He is now 32 years old, has saved up for the trip, and has applied to many foundations for support. He chose Australia and JCU because they have the best research institutions for tropical marine biology, and he has not yet been disappointed by what he has found ‘down there’, he says.

“As a budding researcher, it’s great to participate in a project like this, where I have the opportunity to work with other researchers in a field of research that I would like to work with later. I am learning an incredible amount about new methods and tricks that I would never have learnt by just going to lectures,” he says.

UCPH master’s student’s photos went global

In addition, the protection of vulnerable nature is something that is close to him, so he is happy to help map out how the bleaching and disease spreads on the reef in order to counteract it more systematically in the future.

The project’s research team is working on analyzing the images of the state of the reef, processing the tissue samples, finding out what the energy reserves in the corals are, and conducting histological studies.

His job is also to photograph the corals when he, with other researchers and fellow students, goes out to the reef, and some of his images have hit global media this summer ‘down under’.