Judge student learns to help the underwater ecosystem

Photo courtesy of JMCHS.

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By Carter Holyoak

Special to the Intermountain Catholic

Most environmental issues that we face today are immediately apparent to our communities, whether it is smog in the air from the inversions, or seeing litter throughout the streets. One issue that we don’t see, but is equally threatening, is coral deterioration. With our lack of access to the ocean in Utah, it is a little tough to witness this event first hand. But Judge Memorial Catholic High School junior Chris Athens traveled to Hawaii to study the effects humans are having on one of the essential parts of the underwater ecosystem.

“The problem that a lot of the coral now are facing is bleaching,” Chris said. “The acidity in the ocean is getting so high that the corals are dying off.”

Chris learned this while working hands on with one of the world’s most renowned coral scientists, Ruth Gates. The Ruth Gates Lab at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology sponsored a project where high school students from around the country worked together to try and breed a stronger type of coral resistant to bleaching.

While the project Chris took part in sounds rather science intensive, Chris said that because most of the research took place at night, the students could do whatever they wanted throughout the day. The only restriction was once returning to Coconut Island, an island dedicated to research and where Chris’s team was working, the students had to rigorously wash their hands and arms. With breeding coral being such a delicate process, any introduction of sunscreen into the coral can kill off the coral that is being bred.

With ocean temperatures showing no signs of cooling down, it is a race against time to create coral that can survive the warming waters. Chris described the root of his team’s efforts, “We were taking corals that were resistant to bleaching and we were taking their sperm and egg and trying to make a coral that was more resistant to bleaching than the corals that were dying off.”

Only time will tell, but hopefully these scientific developments are able to preserve one of the most beautiful ecosystems on the face of our earth.

Carter Holyoak is a member of the Judge Memorial Catholic High School Class of 2018.