MOTE SCIENTISTS INVITED TO SABA TO SURVEY CORAL, TEACH COMMUNITY

A local teenager completes his first coral survey on Saba’s Tent Reef. TIFFANY DUONG/Keys Weekly

“What you know, you’ll protect; so, I think the more everyday citizens know about the ocean, the more they’ll want to protect it,” said Sara Williams. 

Williams is a coral disease expert at Mote Marine Laboratory. She and Erinn Muller, head of Mote’s Coral Health and Disease Program, were invited to the Caribbean island of Saba to share their knowledge about coral diseases and effective treatments as part of Saba’s annual Sea & Learn Festival.

The event is a month-long community engagement and knowledge exchange meant to improve understanding and protection of the local marine resources. Every October, ocean scientists from around the world fly to the tiny island to share what they know. The format is unique: experts receive a stipend to cover airfare and accommodation. In exchange, they commit to presenting one evening talk on their area of expertise, hosting a hands-on field project for anyone to join as a citizen-scientist, and talking to local schools and the elderly. All events are free to the public to join. 

The topics are environmental issues and challenges pertinent to Saba, such as influxes of sargassum, lizard parasites and coral diseases. The interactive curriculum throughout the month empowers locals and visitors to make a difference.

Coral expert Erinn Muller presents to a packed crowd during Saba’s Sea & Learn Festival. VINH PHAM/Contributed

Additionally, the public talks are hosted at local bars and restaurants during happy hour. That way, visitors to the island can join without missing any diving or dining opportunities and locals can come after work, said Sea & Learn founder Lynn Costenaro. “It’s not meant to be a classroom,” she added. “It’s a win-win-win for the community, the scientists and the local economy.”

“This kind of community-based knowledge share is so important for science,” Williams said. “The purpose of science is to bring back what we find to everyone else who’s not a scientist,” and this type of event facilitates that exchange. 

For their talk, Mote’s coral experts gave a brief overview of stony coral tissue loss disease’s (SCTLD) impact on the Florida Keys and the evolution of treatment methods. The packed house at Saba’s Ocean Club restaurant included local kids, repeat visitors, marine park employees and dive shop owners. 

Mote Marine Laboratory scientists Erinn Muller and Sara Williams brought model diseased corals and Play-Doh “antibiotic paste” for Sabans to practice applying disease treatments on land. VINH PHAM/Contributed

“There’s a lot (of SCTLD) on Tent Reef,” said dive instructor Jarno Knijff. “It’s absolutely crazy.” The reef is one of Saba’s marquee reefs, and Knijff has witnessed the quick decline in the number of corals there over recent months. He and others wanted to know what, if anything, they could do.

“Stony coral tissue loss disease is one of the major diseases affecting this region,” Muller said. “It’s the most devastating coral disease ever recorded.”

Still, she focused on why they remain hopeful. “Now, we have medicines to apply to coral underwater,” Muller said. “We treat corals with an antibiotic paste, and, 80% of the time, it stops the disease from spreading.” 

So far, coral disease practitioners have treated 25,000 corals and saved them from dying of SCTLD, Muller said. Additionally, for other coral diseases like black band disease, underwater ointments made from natural products that “smell like Christmas” have been wildly successful, she said. “The natural products have antimicrobial properties that get the coral healthy 100% of the time. So, stony coral tissue loss disease is bad, but black band treatment has some promise.”

As part of the Sea & Learn curriculum, local teenagers trained for free to join Mote Marine Laboratory scientists on coral survey dives. TIFFANY DUONG/Keys Weekly

The audience applauded, loudly. Immediately, representatives from the marine park and local conservation organizations stood up. “Are these solutions that the marine park here can use, too?” they asked.

Perhaps, with proper assessments, some of these techniques from Florida could be deployed in Saba, Muller said. Step one is surveying the reefs, and the experts then invited any divers to join them the next day on their field project to do just that.

“We get to invite everyone here who’s a diver to go see the coral and teach them how to identify what’s healthy and what’s sick. So, they get to go out and see the actual impact that this really devastating disease is having on their local reef,” Williams said as she prepared a hands-on training demonstration at the restaurant. Using modified syringes filled with Play-Doh, she showed locals and visitors, old and young alike, how to properly deploy an antibiotic paste on a model disease coral.

Saba’s Sea & Learn Festival gives locals and visitors a chance to join world-class scientists as citizen-scientists. VINH PHAM/Contributed

“The more we can bring these experiences to them, bring it to their local community and explain why it’s important to Saba the island rather than just teaching them what’s going on in the Florida Keys, the better the people of Saba will be able to appreciate their own resources and go out on the boat to protect it,” Williams said. 

As the last audience members trickled away from Muller’s presentation, they said, “Thanks for the education. It’s really important. I learned so much.”