Producer's Blog: Ekolu’s reef

Call me irritated. It's 82 degrees in Maui and there is not a cloud in the sky. And the local weathermen keep their fingers crossed that no one ever records that sentence and puts them out of a job.   

I’m standing on sand near LaHaina on the island’s west end. The water temperature is about 80, the winds are slightly offshore, and I can’t keep my eyes off that wave. It’s a beautiful one that breaks off a reef about 60 yards from the beach and peels slowly down the line. It’s a four-footer and nothing legendary, especially for Hawaii, but its consistent and there is no one else on it and for my money having a four-footer all to yourself beats battling for eight-footers in a crowded lineup all day long. So there’s that. 

But rather than ask Ekolu Lindsey if I can borrow a board (it looks like he has about two-dozen), I’m asking him for an outlet so I can set up some camera lights. 

The toughest thing about being a producer for a show that makes its bones by covering really cool things in really cool places, is that when on assignment you must resist the near constant urge to sell off all the gear, bid a fare-thee-well to the crew, and join the circus, as it were.

We’re in Hawaii to cover coral reefs. We’re interviewing Ekolu Lindsey in his beachfront backyard because he knows the corals where he lives the way he knows the fish that populate them, the way he knows the waves that break on them and the way he knows the dangers posed to them. Which is to say, expertly.

And therein lies the irony of my situation. I’m pining over an unridden wave that would not exist without the reef beneath it. And I’m here to cover a story about the potential disappearance of that reef, and many more thousands just like it. 

Grab a board, or grab the story? The story wins...this time.

And the story is this:

According to the World Resources Institute, 100% of the world’s coral reefs will be in danger of loss or degradation by the year 2050.

Those numbers suck.

The biggest problem facing coral reefs is that they are facing more than one big problem. If it was just rising sea surface temperatures or just ocean acidification or just overfishing or just sediment runoff or just pollution or just tourism footprints….well, then they might be getting better odds. But, in almost every area of the world coral reefs are facing all of those collective threats at the same time.

We’re in Maui because one of those threats, sea surface temperature rise, showed some real teeth in 2015 and manifested itself into what scientists deemed a global bleaching event. 

Corals are symbiotic animals. They rely on microscopic algal cells for their food. When temperatures rise even a little above the norm, the corals reject the algae out of their bodies and with them their only source of food. They begin to starve. The algae also give healthy coral its brown color. So again due to the loss of algae, the corals turn a brilliant white. The effect is known as bleaching and, as mentioned, 2015 saw so much of it around the world that for only the third time in history scientists declared it a global event.  

I think when we are near the water it becomes easy for us to slip into reverie. I know it is for me, especially in Ekolu Lindsey’s backyard where the palms sway and the outrigger canoe sits and the waves beckon. Troubling thoughts do not come easy in a place like this. It’s a postcard come to life and perhaps the instinct is to shoo away that which interferes with the aesthetic. 

But then you remember that this place would not exist without coral reefs and neither would so much else.

• 500 million people around the world rely on coral reefs for food, income and natural barriers from the ocean.

•  30 million people rely on coral reefs directly for those necessities.

• 25% of all marine life in our oceans need coral reefs for their survival.

Those numbers are staggering by themselves. Now picture a big red stamp over them that says ‘Gone By 2050’.

Ekolu Lindsey knows the numbers too. And when we interview him for our story he speaks with the brilliance of a scientist who has studied the reef before us his whole life, and also with the poignancy of a great-grandson whose family has called the reef home for more than 125 years.

By the time we finish the interview the wave is gone. This happens. Winds shift, tides change, and good waves are fickle creatures that only appear when they are enticed by the correct conditions.

I leave hoping to come back someday and see that wave again. That is, if the reef that creates it can hang around long enough.