Life Finds a Way -- But Needs Our Help

07/17/2012 08:41 am ET | Updated Sep 16, 2012

I can't remember who dragged me to see the movie Jurassic Park, but one resonant line in that movie was worth the price of admission: "Life finds a way." It popped out at me because it so succinctly summed up a truth behind all of nature's stunning diversity and the continuity of the living adventure of Life on Earth.

Australian ecologist Roger Bradbury has recently asserted that coral reefs are doomed, living-dead, "zombie ecosystems" that will inevitably -- and soon -- utterly collapse under the multiple fatal blows of overfishing, pollution and the ocean acidification and warming resulting from the global buildup of carbon dioxide. (See his New York Times op-ed, "A World Without Coral Reefs".)

Bradbury says we should give up. Any hope for reefs, he says, is a delusion. (Andy Revkin collected a few responses from scientists at his New York Times Dot Earth blog.)


Image: A former coral reef overrun with algae and seaweed in Guatemala. Photo credit: Suzanne Arnold.

Can that really be so? Certainly things die, lineages go extinct -- and coral reefs are in a world of hurt. All true. Also true is the existence of heat-tolerant corals, corals that are regularly exposed to (and routinely survive) the extreme stress of finding themselves out in the tropical air at low tide, and many ocean organisms that live through large swings in pH through tidal cycles.

Yes many coral reefs are degraded. Yes it doesn't look good. But sometimes living diversity supplies marginal adaptations that suddenly fit perfectly into new conditions. Someone (not Darwin) called it "survival of the fittest." That's what the phrase means; not survival of the strongest but of the ones who find themselves in the right place at the right time as conditions change to suddenly suit them. Look around; it works.


Bradbury suggests giving up and spending money on what to replace the values (for example, fish) that coral reefs have provided to humans. But what would giving up look like? Overfishing is old news, and plenty of people are, in fact, spending money trying to raise fish. Some are making money. Overpopulation: also old news and crucial to everything from water supplies to prospects for peace. One doesn't need to certify future coral reef destruction to realize that overpopulation is bad for human health and dignity, not to mention a catastrophe for wild living systems. These problems have caused the losses to date and they continue. Warming and acidification are also building.



Carl Safina and Robert Steneck survey a recovering Pacific reef in Palau. Photo credit: Suzanne Arnold.

Giving up, while reefs still flourish in many places, means accepting what is unacceptable, and abandoning work on situations that can likely be improved. It means deciding to be hopeless. It means giving up on the reefs, the fishes, and the people, who need all the combined efforts of those who both know the science best -- and who, while life exists, won't give up.
