Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/benin-coral-reef

by speckx • 1 day ago

387 91 1 day ago

e360.yale.edu

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles...

F7F7F7• 1 day ago

The biodiversity in West Africa in general is completely underrated. I mean, Darwin solidified his trajectory in life a few short days after the Beagle anchored off of Cape Verde (a place he initially detested then fell in love with).

I'm hoping that Cape Verde's World Cup success story translates to more eye balls on stories like this (with the mere mention of the country landing it in search results). Which means more attention, money and research to West Africa's relatively fragile but diverse ecosystem.

lubujackson• 17 hours ago

There are 6 floristic kingdoms in the world, and Fynbos can only be found in a tiny section of Africa.

When I was there it was wild to see a completely different array of plants and flowers. There is one small white flower that had petals that felt like some sort of sythentic material. There is a whole world that very few people experience or even know exists.

novia• 1 day ago

Zinzindohoué agrees: “We don’t need to wait for others to come to our country to show us what is under our sea. We are the ones who must take responsibility.

wildfireday22• 1 day ago

Yet, they didn’t.

And for those commenting about risk from tourism, this is mesophotic coral at 175 feet. It’s out of range of recreational scuba much less shallow-reef snorkelers. Only technical divers can reach this reef. That’s why it hadn’t even been explored for all this time.

paulhebert• 1 day ago

Isn’t this whole article about how they’re doing so right now?

Anoian• 1 day ago

The less people know, the better. These places are better left untouched by humanity.

SparkyMcUnicorn• 1 day ago

This source appears to have more images and info: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles...

dang• 1 day ago

We'll put that link in the toptext as well. Thanks!

functionmouse3• 1 day ago

[flagged]

lemonberry2• 1 day ago

I walk an old logging trail near my house. 5 years or so ago I was walking and came across a lady slipper. Then another and another. I stopped counting at around 100. I've never seen so many in one place. It was incredible. I stopped taking people there when they've bloomed to help preserve them. It's a free and public place, but on a lightly travelled road so it doesn't actually get much traffic. Anyone that takes that walk at the right time of year will see them, but I've no interest in helping the inevitable happen if word gets out.

akk0• 1 day ago

Not having heard of this plant before, I was rather confused why people would leave so much footwear on this trail.

slibhb• 1 day ago

Yeah, only publish stories about coral bleaching, animals going extinct, and forest fires. Censor any good news at all costs!

aboardRat43• 1 day ago

Forest fires are natural.

Coral bleaching seems too actually be a sign of prosperity, not suffering.

dlcarrier• 1 day ago

You don't even need to actively censor it; it's human nature to not only solely pay attention to bad news, but also to amplify it. It's generally true for all mammals, but they scale of things we're conscious of is orders of magnitude larger than any other mammal species.

Eueudhsbsj32• 1 day ago

I think it depends. In developing countries, ecotourism even when poorly managed is better for conservation than uncontrolled fishing/farming.

ars2• 1 day ago

What's the point in it existing then? Just for a couple of the chosen few?

I'm aware that lots of people can be destructive, but there's a balance.

functionmouse3• 23 hours ago

For its own sake, not ours.

peter_stokes2• 1 day ago

Not in developing countries. Especially not when in the commons (e.g. territorial waters). Awareness + western tourism is often the only way these things get protected.

mips_avatar• 1 day ago

Very few people travel to visit the Amazon especially in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. In the absence of tourist money these amazing ecosystems are being turned into agriculture and logged. In the protected areas supported by eco tourism the sound of the insects is deafening. But a few miles away in the banana plantations the area is completely silent. Even on “organic” banana plantations every insect is killed.

asdfman123• 1 day ago

Hey there Mr. Jambo

1970-01-01• 1 day ago

Shut up about the exact location, but do tell us about it. Just make it hard enough so the ignorant tourism industry cannot find it.

tomhow2• 1 day ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

functionmouse3• 1 day ago

I think you're right. Thanks.

bluebarbet2• 1 day ago

The comment is flippant but IMO it's also a pithy summary of an important argument in this debate. To which some of the responses are thoughtful and substantive.

Tangential: I quite often slap down comments for much the same reasons you're using. No objections there, in fact I wish more people would do it.

yieldcrv• 1 day ago

reading all those easily solved frictions they encountered was sad

ck2• 1 day ago

vaguely related I read a fascinating story the other day about basically garbage dumping of leftover oyster/clam shells being used to re-seed a marine ecosystem off the Florida Keys

* https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/florida-dumped-h...

soperj4• 1 day ago

they were doing that in New York as well if I'm not mistaken

Jtsummers• 1 day ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Oyster_Project - Different effort, this one is about putting out living oysters, not just shells as GP was talking about.

And to be clear, in GP's link, living oysters do show up, but they weren't put there deliberately (the shells and every other development provided the larvae with places to grow and establish themselves). The NY project started with oyster larvae placed on discarded shells to deliberately create the new environment with an oyster population.

randerson• 18 hours ago

NYC even dumps their old subway cars to create coral reefs:

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-subway-cars-turning...

nothinggoesaway• 1 day ago

Chemical sunscreen famously kills coral.

Some dermatologists have noted that sunscreen is little used in Africa. [1]

I’m not saying that is the only explanation for the reef’s preservation, but it’s likely a significant contributing factor.

[1] https://theconversation.com/sunscreen-wouldnt-have-saved-bob...

wildfireday22• 1 day ago

That and being 175 feet below the surface. You’re not getting “sunscreen” on mesophotic coral.

parineum2• 19 hours ago

The evidence for sunscreen killing coral is pretty thin and the evidence that so-called mineral sunscreen _not_ killing coral is non-existent.

frollogaston• 18 hours ago

The mineral sunscreen comes off way more easily in water. For that reason, so did a few layers of my skin in the Bahamas.

bix618• 1 day ago

For the coral lovers. There are multiple companies working on reef preservation. They are woefully under resourced. If you can help, please do.

Aboutplants• 1 day ago

I’ve always been curious as to the level of success these programs achieve compared to just letting nature respond on its own. There are many cases where “dead” areas come back to life with abundance and give me pause as to whether we should for the most part just get out of natures way.

bix618• 1 day ago

Here’s one successful example that only worked because of human intervention: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.h...

They can only survive short duration events. At some point the temp and time is too much and they die. The only way they come back is reintroduction.

We’ve lost over 50% of the reefs and are expected to lose 90% by 2050.

There are many amazing solutions. Some use corals more resistant to heat stress. Australia has seen some promising results with seed boxes. I know of a few other amazing solutions currently in the lab.

We have already gotten in natures way. So now we need to help nature with our technology.

phkahler• 1 day ago

I recall reading that the corals can reproduce both sexually and by cloning, with most in nature using cloning. The researchers brought them back to a lab and bred a bunch of them and found a lot of offspring could thrive in the warmer more acidic water, so they wanted to reintroduce them to a reef (or maybe they had). Been a while but it was interesting. Not sure what it takes to shift away from cloning in nature, but waiting for most the reef to die off seems backwards ;-)

bamboozled• 1 day ago

Homeostasis, that was probably an option for most of nature in the 1950s or something, I think the damage is too great to just leave the reefs, forrests and other habitats to "fend for themselves". Even if what you say is true from an environmental perspective, we also have to fight to protect these areas from exploitation from fisherman, mining etc.

bryanrasmussen• 1 day ago

I would suppose getting out of nature's way happens in one of two ways - infrequently because there is nothing of value in an area left to extract so people leave it alone, or infrequently because there is regulation forcing people to leave it alone.

xandrius• 1 day ago

You should give some names if you personally know them.

bix618• 1 day ago

I work with Hybrid Reefs out of Scripps in San Diego. Daniel is an amazing dude, Moore fellow, and prolific inventor. If you can help, there’s contact info on the website. https://www.hybridreefs.com/

Coral Vita is the trailblazer in the for profit category, first coral Series A (2025). I don’t know them yet though. https://www.coralvita.co

https://coral.org is a 501c3. One of my friends is on the board.

Other fun stuff.

Mars runs one of the most prolific programs: https://www.buildingcoral.com/

Reefstarter was backed by my friends at SOSV. They design coastal barriers. Great team. East coast for any of you Floridians. https://www.reefstarter.net/

There’s more but there’s a few off the top.

In general the US is primarily focused on erosion control since the beaches are disappearing. Coral is more an afterthought especially with the gutting of all our science. Australia is really leading the way here with AIMS and Saudi has KAUST. Big ups to the Paul Allen Foundation though, they gave Scripps $10M a few years back.

Fun stat to end with: coral reefs are responsible for over $10T in annual economic value. They get less than $1B a year to ensure they stick around. We’re gonna change that.

peter_stokes2• 1 day ago

More details on the Deep Sea Camera System used here:

https://www.dev.nationalgeographic.org/society/our-programs/...

https://github.com/NGS-Exploration-Technology/Deep-Sea-Camer...

danteocualesjr• 1 day ago

That's wild

rendonroman• 23 hours ago

Nice to read a paper that's looking for paths of persistence instead of only documenting decline. Climate stories often end with "thing are getting worse", this one also asks where ecosystems might still persist if local conditions are managed well.

davidinosauro• 15 hours ago

I'm just now reading _Ocean_ by David Attenborough and Colin Butfield, which includes many stories like this. Would recommend!

BloodyIron• 21 hours ago

YAY!

pcrh• 10 hours ago

Related, I recently read an article about staghorn corals surviving in Miami of all places [1]. They resisted bleaching, pollution and inundations with fresh water. The origin of this resistance is apparently colonization by a different species of algae that is otherwise native to the western Pacific and Indian Oceans.

[1] https://www.biographic.com/the-corals-that-shouldnt-exist/

spaaaaaaaaaaace• 3 hours ago

wow interesting

consumer451• 2 hours ago

I am sorry to be negative, but after living in a commercial fishing area for a while: I wish we would stop discovering reefs, as that just invites horrible things like drag net fleets into these areas. [0]

We are strip-mining the oceans' remaining bounty.

When I lived in that commercial fishing area, I learned about bycatch. That is a top-tier euphemism for destroying the entire ocean ecosystem/protein-provider, where sometimes only 3% of caught biomass makes it to any table. [1]

Shrimp is by far the worst. Please stop eating shrimp. If you knew the truth, and respect efficiency, you would never eat wild shrimp again.

I went from thinking that seafood was a good thing, to now mostly eating chicken. We are such morons with how we treat the seas. BTW, I love spearfishing. If that is how I got my seafood, then not only fun, but no waste/bycatch.

[0] https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/

[1] https://www.fao.org/4/w6602e/w6602E09.htm

Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

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