Sea Change Radio

Coral reefs are among the planet’s most beautiful treasures, hosting creatures strange and colorful. They’re more than just pretty, though. Coral reefs provide vital habitats for a vast array of marine organisms, they are an essential piece of ocean ecosystems, and they actually protect coastlines from erosion. This week on Sea Change Radio we speak to Curt Storlazzi from the US geological survey who outlines a recent study promoting the bolstering of coral reefs off of Puerto Rico and Florida. Storlazzi compares coral reefs to seawalls in terms of protecting us from rising sea levels, gives a snapshot of the study’s cost benefit analysis, and explains how the proposed reef bolstering program could help protect vulnerable coastal populations.

Narrator | 00:02 – This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I’m Alex Wise.

Curt Storlazzi (CS) | 00:24 – We’re working with Nature. Nature figured out how to do this. We haven’t been the nicest to nature, but we’re learning that if we take care of nature, hopefully it can help continue to take care of us, and we just need to help accelerate that recovery.

Narrator | 00:39 – Coral reefs are among the planet’s most beautiful treasures, hosting creatures, strange and colorful. They’re more than just pretty, though Coral reefs provide vital habitats for a vast array of marine organisms. They’re an essential piece of ocean ecosystems, and they actually protect coastlines from erosion. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Curt Storlazzi from the US Geological Survey, who outlines a recent study promoting the bolstering of coral reefs off of Puerto Rico and Florida. Storlazzi compares coral reefs to sea walls in terms of protecting us from rising sea levels, gives a snapshot of the study’s cost benefit analysis and explains how the proposed reef bolstering program could help protect vulnerable coastal populations.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:44 – I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Curt Storlazzi. He is a research geologist at the US Geological Survey, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center. Curt, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Curt Storlazzi (CS) | 01:53 – Thank you for having me.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:54 – So you and your colleagues at the USGS have just completed a study outlining the value of Coral Reef Restoration in Florida and Puerto Rico. Maybe you can summarize it for us to just get started?

Curt Storlazzi (CS) | 02:09 – What are we trying to do? We’re trying to provide unbiased sound, scientific information to guide management. Over the past decade or so, uh, we show that coral reefs act like natural submerged breakwaters dissipating a lot of wave energy, and thus protecting the coastline in the associated coastal communities. Our colleagues have also shown, however, that over the past decades to half a century, that the reefs have severely degraded, they’ve gotten deeper and less complex, and that’s allowing more wave energy to reach the shoreline, and it’s causing increased erosion and, uh, and coastal, uh, flooding during the storms. So this study that we just did, which was funded by the 2017 Hurricane supplemental, so, you know, following hurricane’s, Irman Maria, that really negatively impact Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and Florida, as part of the billions of dollars for recovery, the government put a little bit of money aside to say, what can we do to reduce these impacts in the future? Because we know, again, as those reefs have degraded, they’ve gotten deeper and, uh, less complex that’s allowed more wave energy to reach shore, reach the shoreline. One, to understand of how can we work with nature to re, to, uh, increase that effectiveness of, uh, protect or the, their ability to protect the coastline. And so using a really complex modeling system, uh, it’s 12 steps and like most 12 step processes, long and painful. But <laugh>, it comes to a, a good conclusion. Um, basically what we were able to do is model coastal flooding during a, a bunch of storms. And then we basically put coral reef restoration. We made the reef shallower and more complex to dissipate more wave energy, and that reduced the amount of flooding. And what we could do is assess in that area of no, that was no longer flooded, how many people live in that area? How many people work in that area? What’s the value of their buildings and property? And so then that allowed us to basically run a cost benefit analysis. And that’s how most things get funded. You know, you say, okay, well the benefit is that flood protection, how many people, how many buildings, the value of those buildings and economic activity versus the cost of that restoration. And using the most, most recent numbers we get on coral reef restoration of about $3 million per kilometer with about half of that actually to putting out structures and planting corals on top of them. And about half of it terms long-term maintenance because we, we know that there are global bleaching events. We know that there’s gonna be disease outbreaks. So we don even just put things out there, but to actually realize there’s gonna be longer term maintenance costs. And so we did that, and what we showed is, depending on the economic model, you know, whether you have to pay everything up front, like paying your house in cash <laugh>, you know, that would be only about 2% of the area. If you could pay that out over 30 years at a basically 7% interest rate, that’s up to 20% of the coastline that would have a cost benefit ratio over one, which means the benefits, uh, exceed the costs. Um, and what that does, which I think is really, uh, fascinating, is that the US spends about half a billion dollars a year on coastal protection through such programs as the Army Corps of Engineers, engineer and nature program. The, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has $2 billion programs, the Hazard Mitigation Grant program, and the busi building Resistant Infrastructure and Communities, those both are about 2 million billion dollars per year. And so what happens is, if we can show that coral reef restoration can reduce hazards, then it opens up those huge pots of money for pre-disaster mitigation or post-disaster recovery to be able to restore coral reefs to first and foremost protect coastal communities. But what even more exciting is then they get those coastal communities, get all those other ecosystem benefits, you get tourism, fisheries, all those things. You know, the the person who owns a gas station who’s, you know, fills up boats that go out fishing, those, uh, snorkel operators, those, um, you know, restaurants that feed all the people that come in for tourism. So it really creates this incredible opportunity to use these pre-disaster mitigation, hazard mitigation funds or post-disaster recovery funds to work with nature to protect coastal communities and help boost the economy, which I think is a very unique opportunity.

AW | 07:24 – And you’re saying that just in an apples to apples comparison of like sea walls versus coral reefs, coral reefs are still better protectors of coastline than a sea wall over a long period of time, irrespective of the list that you just gave as well in terms of restaurants and tourism and other, um, benefits to the, the community.

CS | 07:47 – Well, we can say this is, I mean, listen, <laugh>, most of a coral reef outside of the outer lit few millimeters is basically a bunch of carbonate rock. And so, whether you bring in rock from, the mountains to build a break water or pour concrete, they behave very similarly. So I don’t want to sit there and say, coral reefs are better than concrete. The thing is, is they provide all those other benefits that just a sea wall or a bulkhead will not also, you could argue, are probably more aesthetically pleasing. But also, you know, the thing is, is you build a breakwater and as sea level rises, you’re going to have to continually add more material to it to keep up with sea level coral reefs, if treated properly, can grow with sea level rise. And so that feature, that coral reef can grow and maintain itself again, if treated properly. You know, if we continue to negatively impact them through pollution or construction, you know, dumping dredge material on them or something, then they won’t be able to keep up. But if we do take care of them and protect them, they can grow a sea level rise, which again, those fixed anthropogenic structures, seawalls bulkheads will not.

AW | 09:09 – So the difference between a concrete seawall and a carbonate coral reef is that man has to build, physically build up that sea wall as sea levels rise while coral reefs are living animals that can grow according to its natural environment?

CS | 09:28 – Yep, exactly. And can repair itself. We know coral reefs get damaged by storms, just like sometimes bulkheads or sea walls get damaged. However, coral reefs have been impacted from tropical cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons for hundreds of millions of years. So it’s part of their evolution.

(Music Break)| 09:58

AW | 10:40 – This is Alex Wise on Sea Change Radio, and I’m speaking to Curt Storlazzi from the US Geological Survey. So Curt, before we dig into the details of the cost benefit analysis that you and your team have created, I’d like to know more about the science of restoring coral reefs. You, you mentioned how with you can overcome these bleaching events and you, you can restore by planting, but maybe peel back the curtain for us and explain the how, how the sausage would be made in, in that process of, of restoring a coral reef area.

CS | 11:16 – Okay, well that’s a great question. And so the one thing I’d like to make clear here is we’re talking about restoring coral reefs. A lot of folks do coral restoration that’s out planting corals that are, you know, a few centimeters high, or sorry, a few inches high. However, like you said, we, what we’ve come to understand over the past decades to half a century, if we’ve lost multiple feet of coral reefs, it’s actually degraded. The sea floor has gotten deeper and that’s decades to centuries worth of coral growth that has been lost. So if we’re to restore reefs, it’s not just the act of living corals, but we’ve got to bring ourselves, we got to replace those decades to centuries of lost carbonate material. And because that causes the wave breaking, it creates the structure that helps with fisheries and all those other ecosystem benefits. So in this study, we did not just model out planning a little bit of, you know, a few set inches of corals. We talked about basically what we talk, what we call hybrid restoration, putting out a concrete base structure and out planning corals on top of that concrete base structure gives us are decades of centuries l uh, loss, uh, of reef replace, and then the corals can start to grow on it and fill it in those base structures. There’s companies out there commercially sung, called Reef Balls. Um, the University of Miami has developed something called Clink. The University of Hawaii is developing similar types of concrete base structures.

AW | 12:57 – And can those be used together in concert with each other or are they all disparate solutions?

CS | 13:03 – Well, so like Miami’s are kind of geared towards their kind of coastal configurations that the shape and the morphology of their reefs. Hawaii’s are designed more for Pacific considerations. And then the corals they’re working with, they’re different species in the, uh, Indo-Pacific versus the Atlantic Caribbean. So again, the first part’s designing those base structures, and again, these academic teams and uh, commercial entities are, are building these. Um, and then on the ecology side of things, they’re trying to make those corals grow faster, be more resilient to thermally, temperature induced bleaching, more resilient to disease and other things. Because again, we know the, the corals have not been doing well and we don’t want to just put the canaries back into the coal mine, right? We don’t want to waste a lot of money paying, putting all these corals out and realizing they’re going to die. Some of them are going to, and again, in our cost benefit analysis, we took into account that, but there are a lot of really great people in academia, in the commercial sector that are really working on selective breeding, cross breeding, some biology and ecology <laugh> that I poorly understand. But to make them more resilient in the future. And so again, this study was to look at that hybrid kind of restoration, putting out a base structure growing on corals. On top of this, a lot of this is being driven by DARPA. I don’t know if you know DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The, the group that brought us the internet and stealth technology and MRA vaccines, they actually have a hundred million dollar fence program. And that’s to build hybrid reef structures, both coral and oyster to protect Department of Defense coastal facilities. And is that part of that project is they’re putting out these structures, um, they just put an oyster reef off of Tyndall Air Force Base and they’re about to deploy a coral hybrid coral reef off Marine Corps base Hawaii O’Koe. So these are the first big experiments of really how far can they push that technology. And DARPA really does push the technology. They set the threshold so high that maybe the groups will fail, but they’ll push the ball so far down the field that’ll be massive advancements. And they do, like MRNA vaccines not only do the basic science, but they’re also pushing to commercialize things. So it’s not just the government who will benefit introvert, the Department of Defense, but it’ll translate to the private sector so cities and local communities can also use that technology.

AW | 15:44 – And what are your projections for the timeline for the restoration of a reef region versus let’s say building a sea wall, which is not an easy infrastructure project either, I imagine?

CS | 15:59 – So I can’t tell you how long it takes to do this because these kinds of things that this scale has not been done before. However, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico used the data presented in this report to apply for a FEMA hazard mitigation grant program, and they got 38.6 million to restore seven kilometers of coral reef off metropolitan San Juan in the international airport. So it’s going to happen soon, but I can’t <laugh>, you know, how long it’s going to take. because most this has not been done at that scale before. But that’s one of the things is, you know, we’ve been de when I say we humans have been developing coastal engineering, uh, for coast, you know, coastal engineering to protect coastal communities for hundreds if not thousands of years, whether you go to like, you know, the Mediterranean or, or Asia. And so we knew how to do these things. And obviously with anything, as you go to greater and greater scale, you get, you know, you get some increases in efficiency and costs, a lot of things going into 3D printing now even 3D printing with concrete, which is absolutely amazing. So I can’t tell you how long it’s going to take. It seems like there’s a lot of momentum. You know, the Army Corps of Engineers says engineering nature’s one of their top program priorities. Department of Defense says we need to protect, we need to cost effectively protect our tropical, coastal bases. And so when the Department of Defense is starting to do this, that’s really going to help push the private sector. And so, like I said, as I think it will rapidly increase, but I can’t tell you how long it’ll take because most of this has not been done before <laugh>.

AW | 17:42 – Can we look to other countries that have big reef areas to see their efforts in this space? For example, I’m thinking Australia with its Great Barrier Reef, I know it’s been under quite a lot of distress over the last few decades.

CS | 17:56 – Yeah, so again, a lot of folks have been out planning corals, they’ve done coral restoration, but to do coral reef restoration, not a lot of folks have done that. The Australians just did a kind of a, kind of a test facility or test project off of Perth, but that was in a, a very sandy area. It wasn’t like restoring a coral reef. It’s not a coral system, it’s kind of a temperate water system. You know, it’d be like doing something off kind of like South Carolina. Um, but they’re, everyone’s trying to move in this direction. Um, you know, the the Australians are, are, are, are part of this DARPA defense program. They’ve got some of their coastal engineers working on it because they know the importance of this. And that, again, it’s just, it’s starting to snowball. We, again, with the kind of studies we did here, we showed it’s cost effective and we grossly underestimated the cost, or sorry, the benefits. Um, you know, we just showed purely on the hazard side, it’s cost, you know, it’s, it’s cost or it’s, it’s positive in terms of benefits, but you know, all the other things, tourism, fisheries, all those things, it couldn’t contribute even so much more benefit. Again, we’re working with nature, nature figured out how to do this. We haven’t been the nicest to nature, but we’re learning that if we take care of nature, hopefully it can help continue to take care of us. And we just need to help accelerate that recovery.

(Music Break) | 19:30

AW | 20:18 – This is Alex Wise on Sea Change Radio and I’m speaking to Curt Storlazzi from the US Geological Survey. Curt, you just mentioned other areas of the US coastline that don’t traditionally have coral reefs like South Carolina, but with rising sea temperatures, is there any opportunity to build up natural reefs where there hasn’t been a reef before, like in South Carolina?

CS | 20:44 – Well, <laugh>, that’s not my area of expertise. I have, I am aware though, that they have found, um, you know, some tropical coral species at some locations off the Carolinas that were not there before. Just for the reason you explained is that there are rising temperatures. But again, you know, our study here is focused on coral reefs only. But you know, the DARPA defense program, half of that programs focus on oyster reefs. And so those are things that, you know, we’re talking Camp Lejeune, they’ve got a lot of coastal erosion there in the bays. You know, that that’s a potential solution there. Um, we can do that, you know, all up and down the US east and west and Gulf coast because there’s oyster reefs in a lot of those estuaries. So it’s this really unique time where I, again, we, we’ve finally been able to show the cost effectiveness of nature. That’s been one of the problems. It seems to me. My opinion is that, you know, it’s always been like, oh, well we can have, you know, this hotel or this or that, but we may impact the reef, but we didn’t have, what’s the value of that reef? Now we have the ability to show the value of that reef in terms of coastal protection. And so that’s not only changing how the government sees things, again, how FEMA and the Army Corps, but it’s also the private sector. You look at Munich Re and Swiss Re, the big reinsurance agencies and their look, their understanding this, where they’re looking to say, gosh, well, if whatever say this, this hotel is going to damage this reef, maybe we’ll rise raise their rates because we know it’s going to increase the susceptibility to damage. And conversely, if they restore that reef, maybe we’ll lower their rates. State of Hawaii basically has an insurance policy for their coral reefs now through Bank of America where if a hurricane hits, they realize the importance of it, they’ll get a cash payout so that they can go out and restore their reefs to bring back that protection caused by the damage of the storm. So when the Department of Defense and the big insurance industries are, are putting their, you know, putting their money where their mouth is and you know, they, they, they, they’re going down this pathway. And I, I think that’s really exciting because, you know, they’re not, you know, liberal or conservative, they just don’t want to lose. And they realize that the science says this is one of the ways to best protect coastal communities.

AW | 23:24 – Before I ask my next question, let me just read to our listeners the title of this new study, which is Hybrid Coral Reefs Restoration can be a cost effective nature based solution to provide protection to vulnerable coastal populations. So let’s talk about these vulnerable coastal populations for a minute. Curt, you mentioned insuring hotels and the like, but what about people who can’t afford to move when rising sea levels make their communities less safe?

CS | 23:55 – Yeah, so one of the things that you look around the world and that a lot of the tropical areas in the world, and even in the US we, we forget, I think, you know, this study focused a lot, you know, focused on Florida and Puerto Rico, but we’ve got tropical coastal communities in the US Virgin Islands, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, and Sienna Mine. And a lot of those in the western Pacific are very important also, department of Defense facility.

AW | 24:26 – What was the last place you said after Guam?

CS | 24:28 – Oh, the commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands like Cyan, Tinian, Rhoda. And so, you know, those places, basically, once you get away from Florida, it’s something like more than 75% of those people in those places are what the US census classifies as minorities. You know, they’re native Hawaiians, Chamorros, Samoans, uh, Virgin Islanders, and a lot of them, those places do not have really high, um, GDP compared to some other states like here in California where I live. And so first off, I mean those, those places are just, again, are, are a little more vulnerable because of those, the, the low income in a lot of those places. But the thing that’s really fascinating about the study is what we show is basically you have flooding during a storm and it starts at the shoreline and the flood waters go inland. If we restore reefs, we basically decrease how far inland that flooding occurs. But what happens is the, the people right at the coast are almost always going to get flooded. You’re protecting actually the people who live further inland. And if you go to, you live in San Francisco, I live in Santa Cruz, it’s a nice big mill, multimillion dollar mansions at the coastline. As you move further back further inland to those neighborhoods, you often move into act first and foremost occupied residences versus, you know, uh, places that sit empty a lot of the times that someone’s second or third homes, but you move into more of the general population. And so that was a really fascinating part of the studies. I mean, a, it protects minorities, but also it protects a lot of children and elderly and low income. Those people who live behind those big buildings. Perfect example, go to go to Miami, the big rich buildings right up front, right on the coastline, go back a block or two. And it’s those, you know, apartment buildings where a lot of the people who work in those hotels and resorts reside and they are often lower income minority, have children have, you know, uh, elderly living with them. And that’s what our results showed. Thus, coral reef restoration. You know, not only could we have a high benefit cost ratio to, you know, allow these high, large pots of money to be used for restoration, but it also protects those vulnerable people.

AW | 27:02 – So explain the goal of a study like this. What are the actionable items you and your colleagues are hoping to get out of publishing this?

CS | 27:11 – So we did a, first off, the study shows that coral reef restoration, hybrid coral reef restoration to reduce flooding, protect people and infrastructure and thus dollars. Then we ran this benefit cost analysis and shows basically the benefit of that restoration is greater than the cost that can then it allows, again, these large pots of money to be used for coral reef restoration to reduce risk and increase the resiliency of coastal communities. That’s our goal, trying to save dollars in lives, protect Americans, and help boost the economy.

AW | 27:50 – Curt Storlazzi is a research geologist at the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center. Curt, thanks so much for being my guest on Sea Change Radio.

CS | 28:00 – Thank you for the opportunity.

Narrator | 28:16 – You’ve been listening to Sea Change Radio. Our intro music is by Sanford Lewis and our outro music is by Alex Wise. Additional music by The Ventures, The Beatles and Delaney and Bonnie. To read a transcript of this show, go to SeaChangeRadio.com to stream or download the show – or subscribe to our podcast on our site or visit our archives to hear from Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gavin Newsom, Stewart Brand, and many others. And tune in to Sea Change Radio next week as we continue making connections for sustainability. For Sea Change Radio, I’m Alex Wise.