A Little Perspective On The Bikini Atoll/Flourishing Coral News

I've written here before about past atomic testing in the Marshall Islands and US plans to continue military testing well into the future there. But some recent news from the Marshall's is getting a lot of attention. Practically every major news outlet is carrying the story that 54 years after the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by the United States on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, scientists have discovered lush coral colonies flourishing in the blast crater.

Researchers from Australia's ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, half-expecting to find a desolate, radioactive wasteland, instead found "plenty of fish, corals and action going on, some really striking individual colonies." The scientists conducting the first comprehensive coral reef survey since the blast discovered some coral colonies up to 9 yards high and some with 12 inch-thick bases.

This is indeed remarkable news and testament to the ability of some natural systems to recover even under the most devastating of circumstances. But I've noticed that in many (if not most) of the online reports of this news, the full story has either been truncated--leaving the reader with the headline message that coral will recover from anything... even an atomic bomb--or important conditional details to the recovery have been buried at the very end. And these two, not insignificant, details are what has likely driven the ability for coral reefs to recolonize after the atomic assault.

Ecological Connectivity
As the researchers themselves have pointed out, Bikini Atoll did not repopulate itself. Following the series of atomic tests, most if not all of the life present within blast areas was effectively extirpated. So where did the new coral recruits come from? The team thinks that Rongelap Atoll is potentially seeding Bikini’s recovery, because it is the second largest atoll in the world with a huge amount of coral reef diversity and biomass and lies upstream from Bikini. So Bikini Atoll became the "sink" to a lot of Rongelap Atoll's "source."

Understanding this sort of connectivity in marine systems is critically important to resource managers, particularly in its application to establishing marine protected areas. As we now know, setting aside a threatened ecosystem as protected may be necessary, but not sufficient for its long term ecological livelihood. We need to also look to neighboring ecosystems for critical connections that are either exporting or importing resources.

Had Bikini Atoll not benefited from this sort of ecological connectivity from undamaged neighboring atolls, I suspect the researchers would indeed have found nothing but an empty rubble hole.

54 Years Without Human Activity
The second relevant detail that many of the news carriers seem to have ignored in documenting the Bikini Atoll recovery is that for the past 54 years, Bikini Atoll has remained undisturbed. Apart from occasional forays of illegal shark, tuna and Napoleon Wrasse fishing, the reef is almost completely unvisited. Divers who visit the Marshall islands dive on shipwrecks, like the USS Saratoga, and not on the reef near the blast sites. Certainly, the concern over residual radiation goes a long way in keeping people out. Interestingly, when researchers checked the ambient gamma radiation of Bikini Atoll, they found it to be comparable to the background radiation in an Australian city. Where they did discover high radiation levels, however, was in plant material such as coconuts which accumulates radioactive material from the soil.

So when humans can step back and not contribute reef stressors associated with their presence (destructive fishing, coastal development, recreation damage from anchors and coral breakage, etc.) reefs can recover from damage even in some of the most extreme circumstances. This isn't necessarily "news" to resource managers, as much of their time is spent devising effective methods of reducing or eliminating these direct human threats.

Not Just A Matter of Semantics
Finally, I take some issue with the use of the word "rebound" to describe the recovery in Bikini Atoll. Does a little over half-a-century constitute a rebound? As an evolutionary biologist, I appreciate the long view of earth time (or "deep time" to use a favorite John McPhee-ism). I realize that 50 years in the "big picture" is hardly a speck of dust in the geologic time scale. But as a conservationist, I fear that taking a sanguine approach to environmental damage as being acceptable when recovery can come in as little as 50 years is setting up a dangerous precedent.

While this study in no way suggests that 50 years is the average recovery time for coral reef systems, for the sake of argument let's just take the number as a baseline figure. I don't know about you, but 50 years is a good chunk of my life. How do you explain to a local coral reef community that has depended upon healthy reefs for their survival that their resource is now gone (due to atomic testing, dredging, development, climate change, whatever.) What does one do while waiting 50 years for recovery? Where does the food come from? Where is the coastal protection from storms? What about the close cultural connections many coral reef communities have established with their reefs?

For me, these and other questions remain unanswered, particularly if we convince ourselves to be comfortable with environmental recoveries that are measured in human life spans.