Jetsettersblog

Dr. Rod Salm, who attended the the Asia Pacific Marine Meeting of The Nature Conservancy www.nature.org held at Rydges Sabaya Resort, Port Douglas, in August 2010, said he was amazed at the health and vigor of the corals he saw when he snorkeled and dived at Agincourt Reef during his visit.

A marine conservation scientist focusing on coral reefs, Salm has worked extensively throughout the world’s reef systems and has just passed his 40th anniversary of working in marine conservation.

Raised in Mozambique, he has studied coral reefs around the East African Coast, the North and West Indian Oceans up to the mouth of the Red Sea, and the Caribbean and Indonesia. Currently he is Director of Transforming Coral Reef Conservation for The Nature Conservancy, a US based global organisation whose charter is to preserve the diversity of life on earth.

“I’ve been fortunate to see reefs almost before other humans during my early career,” he said. “In 1973, I worked with a group studying the Crown of Thorns starfish phenomenon and we began in the Torres Strait and followed the Great Barrier Reef all the way down to Lord Howe Island.

My strong memories of Agincourt Reef during that trip were a great deal of dead corals in the wake of the starfish plague.

“This week, I had the opportunity to go out with Quicksilver and I was keenly interested to see how the company managed the mass tourism experience.

“I dived and snorkeled, and I was impressed by the management of the day by Quicksilver, and by their reef platform and its surrounding corals.

“I was actively looking for evidence of human damage to the corals and I saw none. When you consider the volume of passengers Quicksilver carries to Agincourt, this is quite amazing.

“While I was snorkeling, I saw the most impressive evidence of the healthy state of the corals. As a conservation scientist, my focus is discovering aspects that demonstrate resilience to climate change and I found a great deal of evidence that the corals at Agincourt are in a very positive state.

“In fact, the corals from the top of the reef down to a depth of 5 metres were as healthy and vibrant as I’ve seen anywhere with good colour, no disease and active growth.

“What impressed me most was the coral closest to the surface, where the tips extend often into the sun at low tide and dieback is apparent due to this, had thriving growth – the corals were actually mushrooming over the exposed dieback and this is one of the most healthy indicators I could have wished for.”

Dr Salm said there had been extensive coral bleaching in Thailand, Indonesia and in Palau in the wake of the El Nino effect recently, and that places such as Aceh, Sumatra, were experiencing a coral mortality rate of around 80%.

“Having seen this firsthand, its such a positive contrast to see how well your Great Barrier Reef is faring,” said Dr Salm, who is in charge of regional marine science and strategies for the Asia Pacific region for The Nature Conservancy.

The Port Douglas meeting was attended by 40 delegates from Micronesia, Melanesia, Indonesia, Australia and Hawaii. The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people, and is represented in Australia by the organisation’s offices in Brisbane and Melbourne.