Leaving Panama & Coral Superfood Project Update

The 29th of February marked the end of my time in Panama. As I headed to the airport, I reflected on what an incredible experience my four months there had been. To describe it as life changing would not be an overstatement. My original plan was to stay in Panama for two and a half months, yet I ended up staying four months and still not feeling like it was enough!

Overview -

In Panama I joined a team of researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and conservationists from the NGO Reef Restoration Panama on a collaborative project assessing the possibility of increasing corals resilience to thermal stress through enriched feeding with superfoods. Coral 'superfoods' refer to artemia (small brine shrimp found in the water column which are eaten by coral polyps) enriched with vitamins and antioxidants. These superfoods are thought to help corals better resist bleaching when exposed to a heat wave as they are packed full of compounds which are important for coral health but which are unfortunately often lacking from coral diets due to nutritional deficiencies.

Reef Restoration Panama works to restore degraded reefs in the Portobelo region of Panama. As a part of this work they culture fragments of the Acropora millepora coral in a field-based coral nursery. A coral nursery is essentially an underwater metal/plastic structure on which small coral fragments cut from large natural coral colonies are hung on strings. Over time these fragments grow and can then be transplanted back onto natural reefs, thereby increasing the coral coverage and leading to restoration of the reef ecosystem structure.

Me cleaning algae off a coral nursery structure in Portobelo

Through their research, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute hopes to find methodologies which will allow NGOs such as Reef Restoration Panama to cultivate corals better able to resist the rising sea surface temperatures they are increasingly exposed to.

You may be asking yourself, how can you feed corals? The answer is best shown in the below video. Essentially, a scuba diver closes a ziplock bag around a coral colony and then injects a preparation of enriched artemia solution into the bag from a syringe. Leaving the coral sealed in the bag for one hour provides sufficient time for the coral polyps to feed on the superfood solution. For this project, this feeding process was repeated twice a week over many months for 72 coral fragments grown in the coral nursery.

I was incredibly excited to join this project, as coral reefs are one of the globally most important coastal ecosystems for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Building on my work on the Isle of Arran with seagrass, and in Costa Rica with mangroves, this project provided an opportunity to increase my understanding of another major coastal ecosystem. Additionally, I was happy to join such a collaborative project between academic researchers and an NGO, to contribute to conducting research which can really make a difference.

A Rocky Start -

Two weeks after my arrival in Panama huge political protests broke out across the country in response to a mining contract signed between the Panamanian government and a Canadian copper mine. The contract was largely opposed by the public due to the high level of environmental pollution it would create, with no environmental impact mitigation strategy. For several weeks I was unable to work on my project as all work across Panama essentially broke down. For the first time in my life I witnessed police throwing tear gas. Initially I was quite stressed by this, not being sure if I would be able to complete my project and especially when I got an email from the University asking about the situation! However, all feelings of frustration quickly faded as I very strongly supported the motivations behind these protests.

These were protests lead by young people fighting to protect their country's natural resources and their right to a clean environment. I was living directly next to the Supreme Court where a peaceful 'sit-in' protest was organised, with volunteers taking turns blocking the entrance to the court 24/7 for several weeks. I distinctly remember the moment when the supreme court ruled the mining contract to be unconstitutional because of how loud the cheering was, even from within my room. The public joy after this announcement was incredible, with parades and parties breaking out across the city.

In recent months it has become apparent that although the court ruled against the further development of the mining project, it appears likely that the situation will unfortunately not end there. I strongly encourage everybody to learn more and continue following the situation.

Finally Making Progress -

Despite the initial setbacks with starting the project, I am really happy with what I was able to achieve during my time in Panama. In the field I learnt to measure corals photosynthetic efficiency using a Pulse Amplitude Modulated Fluorometer, how to fragments corals for laboratory analysis, how to 'feed' corals superfoods, as well as how to transplant corals from a nursery back onto a natural reef. This fieldwork required extensive scientific diving, a huge passion of mine that I feel incredibly grateful to have been able to expand. In the laboratory I learnt how to analyse corals health through physiological and biochemical parameters such as protein, chlorophyll and cell content. All together I was able to collect and analyse data from over 150 coral fragments exposed to different superfood feeding treatments. This data is currently being analysed to understand the effects the various superfood treatments had on corals health in the face of several major marine heatwaves.

Measuring coral photosynthetic activity with a pulse amplitude modulated flurometer

Beyond the Project -

Beyond the incredible opportunity to learn all of these new field and lab skills, through collaborating with Reef Restoration Panama I learnt about the realities of managing marine conservation as a small NGO. For example, I learnt how much time and effort goes into the daily maintenance of a coral nursery, as cleaning is essential to prevent algal growth which would lead to coral mortality. Additionally, I witnessed how several large storms knocked down large portions of the coral nursery leading to major setbacks in restoration efforts. Gaining this understanding of the costs, time and effort required to deliver practical marine conservation was very eye opening and I am now much better positioned for future work in marine conservation.

In Panama I additionally really improved my language skills, predominantly working and communicating in Spanish. This has led me to developing the next stages of my R&A project fully in Spanish-speaking countries, opening up opportunities for collaborating with partners that I previously had not considered due to communication barriers.

Emergency Feeding Experiment Results -

As I mentioned in my last post, during my last two months in Panama I led my own 'mini-project', testing if coral superfoods can work as an effective emergency method to restore the health of partially bleached corals after a marine heatwave. This work involved setting up a two week experiment at the coral nursery, where every day I fed selected partially-bleached corals with different superfood mixes to assess if this increased their speed of recovery.

I put a lot of work into the project, spending many days culturing the artemia that underpin the superfood mix, diving every day for two-weeks feeding the corals, and then spending many late nights at the laboratory to finish the data analysis before my flight. Unfortunately, a big storm caused damage to part of the experiment, knocking some of the corals that I was working with into the sand, and when I finished the laboratory work and analysis the results did not show the massive benefits that I had hoped to see.

I was very disheartened by this, having put so much time into researching and setting up the experiment. I had really hoped to contribute new findings to improve coral restoration efforts and quite frankly felt like the 7 weeks total that I put into developing and implementing this experiment had been a huge waste of everybody's time. To add to this, during this experiment I had applied for a Masters by Research programme, hoping to spending the year after the R&A project continuing to research coral restoration, but after this experiment started strongly re-thinking this plan.

After a few weeks of moping I have come to reflect very differently about the situation. Although my experiment didn't work, I was able to identify many factors which could be improved in the experimental set-up for the idea to be tested again. Additionally, having spent two weeks feeding corals for a small-scale experiment I think there are real issues with scaling up this methodology for it to be useful for coral restoration NGOs, as coral feeding requires a level of time and finances that most NGOs do not have. These findings leave me wanting to explore other methodologies through which coral restoration can be improved in the face of climate change, focusing on low-cost solutions targeted for non-academics. I will explore these questions further in a later stage of my R&A project, working as a scientific advisor with the NGO Bica Inc in Honduras.

Final Points -

In Panama I made wonderful friends from all around the world, meeting some of the kindest and hardest working conservationists that I have ever known. I am incredibly grateful to the R&A foundation and all collaborators in Panama for giving me the opportunity to be there, and I really hope to return there again in the near future!

A friendly remora that decided to make its new home on my clip board!