The In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) re­cent­ly launched the Sec­ond Edi­tion of Coral Reefs of Trinidad and To­ba­go writ­ten by Dr An­jani Ganase in com­mem­o­ra­tion of World Oceans Day.

World Oceans Day, des­ig­nat­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions, is com­mem­o­rat­ed every year on June 8 to cel­e­brate the world’s great­est won­der - the ocean. The theme this year is “Won­der: Sus­tain­ing What Sus­tains Us”.

Coral reefs pro­vide food and med­i­cines and serve as the nat­ur­al in­fra­struc­ture that se­quester car­bon and buffer shores. These ecosys­tems sup­port tourism and fish­eries by har­bour­ing rich bio­di­ver­si­ty, yet in­stead of act­ing with ap­pre­ci­a­tion and amaze­ment to­wards them, we have dev­as­tat­ed this ecosys­tem, and pol­lut­ed its depths.

The Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) re­minds us that it is crit­i­cal that we mo­bi­lize all ac­tors to con­serve and sus­tain­ably use the ocean so that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions can have the chance to rev­el in its won­ders, in­stead of won­der­ing what’s been lost (https://un­worl­do­ceans­day.org/). This is what Dr Ganase is try­ing to achieve in her new pub­li­ca­tion, ‘Coral Reefs of Trinidad and To­ba­go’.

Dr An­jani Ganase is a Se­nior Re­search Of­fi­cer at the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs with ex­ten­sive knowl­edge in Coral Reef and Spa­tial Ecol­o­gy. We in­ter­viewed her to gain some in­sight in­to the process of pro­duc­ing the book and the im­pacts she hopes this pub­li­ca­tion has for T&T

How did you get in­volved with coral reef re­search?

Dur­ing my un­der­grad­u­ate years read­ing a de­gree in Ma­rine Bi­ol­o­gy, I need­ed ex­tra cred­its. My lec­tur­er sug­gest­ed that I sit in on grad­u­ate stu­dent class­es with the coral reef re­searcher Pro­fes­sor Van Woe­sik, a fan­tas­tic Spa­tial Ecol­o­gist. He con­duct­ed his re­search on Caribbean and Japan­ese reefs. He in­tro­duced me to coral reefs by pro­vid­ing a dataset that looked at sur­viv­ing corals af­ter the 1998 coral bleach­ing event in Japan. Hav­ing nev­er seen these corals be­fore, it was fas­ci­nat­ing to look them up and put pic­tures of the dif­fer­ent species to the dataset with which I was work­ing, and so be­gan my love for corals. Short­ly af­ter this, I learned to dive in To­ba­go and the rest is his­to­ry!

What has been one high­light of your ca­reer that con­tin­ues to in­spire you to ded­i­cate your life to pro­tect­ing these coral reef ecosys­tems?

Def­i­nite­ly one of my ma­jor high­lights is the com­mu­ni­ty of ma­rine sci­en­tists with­in my net­work who have pro­vid­ed so much sup­port and so op­por­tu­ni­ties for me to study around the world. Their pas­sion is in­fec­tious and I have been for­tu­nate that they have been so will­ing to share their skills with me. This net­work has al­lowed for many col­lab­o­ra­tions and de­vel­oped strong friend­ships along the way. It feels so spe­cial and I try to pay this for­ward and en­sure oth­er per­sons al­so get these types of op­por­tu­ni­ties.

We have seen in the news and are aware that the sur­vival of coral reefs as we know them are in se­vere dan­ger. What are the biggest threats to coral reefs, par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go?

This is a pop­u­lar ques­tion! For me, it is cli­mate change in the sense of the sud­den and very se­vere dis­tur­bances to the reef, where you get reefs suf­fer­ing high mor­tal­i­ty in short pe­ri­ods of time. The scary thing is that these are go­ing to be­come more fre­quent and more se­vere. It is crit­i­cal that we iden­ti­fy the dis­tur­bances we have more con­trol over, and work to­wards mit­i­gat­ing the im­pacts such as land-based sources of pol­lu­tion and over­fish­ing. It is the threats that are be­yond our con­trol that are more daunt­ing.

It is hard to say if fix­ing lo­cal chal­lenges will be enough to curb the threats of cli­mate change as there are few ex­am­ples of sys­tems that work well, though I do think it will slow the im­pacts for sure. For ex­am­ple, pro­tect­ed ar­eas that are over ten years old do the best in terms of re­cov­ery rates. Coral reefs will ex­ist in the fu­ture but in the well man­aged or re­mote ar­eas.

You have writ­ten and are launch­ing the sec­ond ver­sion of coral reefs of Trinidad and To­ba­go! Con­grat­u­la­tions on that ac­com­plish­ment! How did it feel writ­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing book?

I feel very for­tu­nate to be af­ford­ed this op­por­tu­ni­ty and I hope I have done it well. It was a chal­lenge con­sid­er­ing you have so many per­sons’ re­search and work, so many sto­ries to tell and you hope you rep­re­sent this wealth of knowl­edge and the lo­cal coral reef com­mu­ni­ty well. It was a great learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and I feel grate­ful to car­ry on this lega­cy. I do be­lieve the book is over­due and I know it will not be per­fect, but I look for­ward to the fu­ture of coral reef re­search and con­ser­va­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

5. What was your biggest OMG! mo­ment while writ­ing this book? Were there any in­ter­est­ing rev­e­la­tions or any­thing that ex­cit­ed you?

My biggest OMG! Mo­ment was re­al­is­ing how much ground­work has been done over the last few decades in the realm of coral reef re­search and con­ser­va­tion. I def­i­nite­ly had my work cut out for me when com­pil­ing the re­search! So many peo­ple have stud­ied dif­fer­ent el­e­ments of To­ba­go’s reefs, from the an­i­mals to the so­cial and eco­nom­ic val­ues. This leads to the ques­tion of if so much has been stud­ied, why has there been so lit­tle pro­gres­sion in terms of man­age­ment and pro­tec­tion of our coral reefs? It high­lights the fact that sci­ence alone can­not con­nect all the gaps, you need to start reach­ing a broad­er au­di­ence to tru­ly make an im­pact. Talk­ing to the pi­o­neers from the 1980s, there were def­i­nite pe­ri­ods of strong ad­vo­ca­cy for pre­serv­ing our coral reefs. Re­al­is­ing you are walk­ing in their foot­steps makes you feel less alone in this huge, up­hill ef­fort of ocean pro­tec­tion in the face of cli­mate change.

It feels easy to lose hope some­times, would you say writ­ing this book was a re­fresh­ing ex­pe­ri­ence or did it com­pound the re­al­i­ty of our reefs?

It def­i­nite­ly re­ju­ve­nat­ed my “why”, the rea­son why I do what I do. My pas­sion was rein­vig­o­rat­ed as I was able to ex­plore To­ba­go’s reefs for what they are with­out wor­ry­ing about fu­ture dis­tur­bances and with­out pic­tur­ing the neg­a­tive ef­fects that may hap­pen in the fu­ture. I was able to ex­plore dif­fer­ent parts of To­ba­go and re­flect on these reefs and build my ap­pre­ci­a­tion for them.

I un­der­stand this book builds on the ini­tial Coral Reefs of Trinidad and To­ba­go writ­ten by Mr Richard Lay­doo in 1991. In writ­ing this book how does it com­pare to the first pub­lish­ing?

The great thing about Richard’s work was that it sets the foun­da­tion for the fu­ture of coral reef re­search and con­ser­va­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. When I be­gan the sec­ond ver­sion of the book, over 30 years lat­er, so much more re­search has been done as well as the types of re­search. Richard found what was there, he dis­cov­ered and record­ed the tax­o­nom­ic groups of corals on our reefs and pub­lished a small guide­book sup­ple­ment­ed by valu­able tech­ni­cal re­ports. Even col­lect­ing the un­der­wa­ter im­agery in the 1990s was a pi­o­neer­ing feat!

The struc­ture of this book is sim­i­lar to Richard’s though it cap­tures a more ex­ten­sive overview of the un­der­wa­ter en­vi­ron­ments and the con­ser­va­tion, but you must give cred­it to the first pi­o­neers on whose shoul­ders you stand.

What have you learned from Mr Lay­doo’s work and how has this con­tributed to or in­flu­enced your re­search?

Mr Lay­doo’s work and lat­er mon­i­tor­ing ef­forts set the stan­dard for our cur­rent mon­i­tor­ing prac­tices. It pro­vides a base­line for change. There are many places that do not have this valu­able his­tor­i­cal da­ta. Hav­ing this base­line guides the ap­pli­ca­tions and the re­search we can con­duct. It al­so helps us to keep re­al­i­ty in check as we have a clear per­spec­tive on what we have lost and what has changed. Even in restora­tion, Mr Lay­doo’s work pro­vides a ref­er­ence point when ap­ply­ing method­olo­gies and strate­gies. When dis­cussing restora­tion, it is of­ten asked what is your tar­get? In an ide­al world, our tar­get would be what Richard saw decades ago.

What val­ue do you think your book brings? What im­pact do you hope to have through the pub­lish­ing of this book?

That is the pres­sure of writ­ing a book two decades lat­er, who is the tar­get au­di­ence? I re­al­ly tried as best as I could to please every­one and at­tract dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ple. It has el­e­ments of the sci­ence and is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sound but al­so high­lights the com­mu­ni­ty and the faces of lo­cal coral reef con­ser­va­tion. This as­pect is meant to in­spire the young stu­dents who dream of join­ing the call to ocean pro­tec­tion. How­ev­er, there are sec­tions for the per­sons who like pret­ty pic­tures and want to see the beau­ty of our reefs. I hope it will draw peo­ple in and play on their cu­rios­i­ty and em­pow­er them to val­ue the coral reefs in our back­yard.

What ad­vice do you have for the per­son who will write the third ver­sion of Coral Reefs of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the fu­ture?

I be­lieve they will have an even big­ger task! When I look through the re­search pa­pers be­tween 1990s to 2010s, the num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly. How­ev­er, those of us study­ing coral reefs in the fu­ture, must do a bet­ter job of ty­ing it to man­age­ment, al­beit a very dif­fi­cult task. I had a very aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground, and I do wish I had a more or­gan­ic and com­mu­ni­ty-based ex­pe­ri­ence, that would have con­nect­ed me even more to the peo­ple who work in the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment. To the next au­thor, take a deep breath and be pa­tient. It will not be per­fect but take the time to find your own voice and you will car­ry on the lega­cy well. Al­so, in­creas­ing the di­ver­si­ty of the way the in­for­ma­tion is dis­sem­i­nat­ed, such as in doc­u­men­taries, will al­so be a beau­ti­ful next step.

Sneaky ques­tion, but what is your favourite reef? If you had to ad­vise a group of avid divers, which site would you rec­om­mend to them?

I love the Melville Drift dive site off St. Giles Is­land in Char­lot­teville. There is so much to ex­plore and it is so wild! It re­minds me of Juras­sic Park with the birds fly­ing above. It is one of the most un­touched places in To­ba­go, above and be­low the wa­ter.

How can we ac­cess this high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed book?

The Coral Reefs of Trinidad and To­ba­go books will be do­nat­ed to the li­braries of lo­cal pub­lic sec­ondary schools, through NALIS. The book will avail­able for sale for the gen­er­al pub­lic through IMA and de­tails will soon be shared. The sale of this book will sup­port the In­sti­tute’s Ma­rine Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gramme.