Look Down

By Elizabeth Morison

As someone who is interested in botany, I spend a lot of time being told (and telling other people) to look up. Look up! Notice the shapes of the individual trees, and then the canopies. Look up at the leaves, pay attention to the venation, the orientation. Look at the epiphytes, perched precariously on the branches of the trees above you. Look up at the sky in between the leaves, at the birds that disperse the seeds, and at the sun that powers the whole machine! Very, very rarely do I feel inclined to look down, but this week, at Bocas del Toro in Panama, I gained that new perspective.

We burst out of the tangle of mangroves on our zippy speedboat, to open water. Beyond the rushing water, we caught glimpses of shapes that disappeared too quickly for us to make out what they were, making us more and more curious about what we would find under the surface. When the twelve of us finally spilled out of the boat and into Pete’s reef, it was as if the world had flipped – suddenly we were at the highest point, staring down, at a vast and beautiful new ecosystem. Scorpionfish clung to rocks, damselfish defended their territory, parrotfish chomped on algae, annelid worms spread their filters like peacock feathers. Corals and sponges of every colour caught ripples of sun, and I imagined the zooxanthellae churning away, photosynthesizing to make food for the coral polyps that it lived in. It felt almost ethereal to be staring down at it like this.

In between snorkeling sessions, visiting professors Beatriz and Davinia taught us about the processes occurring on the reef. About the symbiosis between zooxanthellae and corals, the production of calcium carbonate, about the importance of mangrove systems as fish nurseries and safe spaces. Every time I learned something new, I felt like I could dive back and see it in action. At home I live by the ocean, and I scramble around in the rock pools every chance I get, but in Panama I really felt like I saw the marine world through new eyes. Learning and snorkeling and learning more and snorkeling more gave me the opportunity to tie all my loose threads of knowledge together, and generate a more holistic understanding of the reef ecosystem.

One sad consequence of an enhanced understanding of coral reefs, though, is an enhanced understanding of the risks they face. We traveled to Bocas del Toro town, a buzzing tourist hub that has experienced uncontrolled development, and overexploits the nearby reefs for hotels, transport, and water activities. Sewage systems are poor, rubbish washes into the sea, and we witnessed the algal blooms and the trash nestled in between corals on the sea floor as confirmation of this fact. What’s more, all around the world, carbon emissions are increasing the temperature and the acidity of the oceans, jeopardizing the coral symbioses that build and sustain the reefs. Now, looking down at the reef, I appreciate it more for its functioning and diversity, but I also appreciate the urgency of the conservation efforts. We must look down at the problems reefs face, and quickly enact solutions.