Coral reefs are some of creation’s most strikingly beautiful places. Clean and clear blue water, graceful whales and sea turtles, swarms of dazzling fishes, and amazing coral. We can’t get enough of coral reefs, so we adorn our walls with paintings and photos. Saltwater aquariums abound in households, restaurants and businesses around the world. 

Naturally, we want to protect all this goodness and beauty. Stewardship is in our DNA. Our emotions can kick in when a threat is perceived. Unfortunately, nefarious people know this about us. People whose agenda has more to do with global power and control than with protecting coral reefs. They tap into our emotions by manufacturing threats, mixing nuggets of truth with futuristic doomsday scenarios designed to keep us in constant fear that we may lose what we love unless things change according to their plan. 

Take for example the PBS News feature titled “Conservationists take drastic measures to save coral reefs from climate change.” Published earlier this year, the video begins by falsely claiming that coral reefs around the world are “slowly dying.” The video then shows members of the Coral Restoration Foundation in Florida scrambling to save a manmade coral nursery they had just planted. Members reportedly gave each other “space to grieve” the corals that died.

The truth nugget was that, indeed, the corals were dying and the water was hot. Optimum temperatures for coral are in the 73-84 °F range. At this point in July 2023, water temperatures in the coral nursery were in the low 90s.

But this truth nugget is embedded in a swarm of lies. Like the story’s title, for one. Or the narrator’s claims that in nearby Manatee Bay, waters reached 101 °F, stating this might be the “hottest ocean temperature ever recorded on Earth.” First of all, Manatee Bay is not an “ocean,” it’s a shallow, semi-enclosed body of water. Most likely, this temperature reading was measured one afternoon in a very shallow (like 6 inches deep) and stagnant part of the bay, nowhere near coral reef habitat. 

Later in the story, the narrator quietly mentions that in October, the corals were returned to the nursery area. No mention is made of the “climate change” event that caused the waters to cool. Why was the natural summertime warming correlated with “climate change,” while the Fall cooling was not? To media outlets like PBS, cooling is not “climate change.” Only above average summer temperatures and fake 101 °F “ocean” temperature measurements fit the narrative. 

With the “climate change” threat averted by Fall and Winter, the PBS story switches to an even more ferocious, and fake, threat: the total collapse of all coral reefs everywhere. IF something this cataclysmic actually happened, we would all be dead, too, but nevermind that minor detail. 

Enter the Smithosonian’s Mary Hagedorn, who spearheads a coral cryopreservation project. Hagedorn works for the largely taxpayer funded Smithsonian on Coconut Island in Hawaii. She says she wants to preserve coral for future generations, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Throughout the world we have “seed banks” to preserve plant species. In a similar manner, Hagedorn hopes to develop a cheap and replicable system to create “coral banks” around the world. 

While the reasons for storing coral fragments in liquid nitrogen may be the thing of science fantasy, the actual knowledge gleaned from projects like this could have benefits in other fields like medicine, or in real conservation work to help a reef recover more quickly after damage from a hurricane.    

Oddly, the PBS video ends with a headline that there is a coral reef in 600-3,000 ft of water in the Atlantic that is 3 times the size of Yellowstone National Park! Wait, you just told us coral reefs are slowly dying, and now you are saying there is a massive, very alive coral reef in the deep and cold ocean?! 

Normally, corals need sunlight to fuel the symbiotic zooxanthellae algae that live amongst them. These algae give corals their color, and will leave when stressed, turning the corals bright pink to white, hence the phrase “coral bleaching.” Apparently these deepwater corals survive just fine without the zooxanthellae.

Did you catch that about coral bleaching? It can be a stress indicator with shallow water corals, but it doesn’t mean they are dead. The PBS story quickly mentions this, and just as quickly moves on, because “coral bleaching” is a scary phrase that needs to stay tied to their false narrative of “climate change” resulting from fossil fuel generated CO₂. 

The misuses of naturally-occurring coral bleaching are legion among the doomsayers. A great example comes from John Brewer Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. A famous 2022 photo in The Guardian shows a mostly-bleached coral near the reef’s surface. “It’s depressing to think about,” says Dr. Terry Hughes, who in 2017 was lead author of a paper in the journal Nature that fits the “coral bleaching is global warming” false narrative. 

Thankfully, facts still matter to some, like Dr. Jennifer Marohasy, a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne-based think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs. Just a year after The Guardian article, Marohasy took her 50 years of ocean experience out to John Brewer Reef to check on the now-famous coral patch. As you can see in this video she made, the coral patch is now doing just fine, as are most of the corals on John Brewer Reef. 

Rather than get emotional about unprovable doomsday fantasies, real scientists like Marohasy verify the claims the doomsayers make by simply observing the real world. And the real world tells a different, and much more positive story! The real story is that coral lives in a harsh and highly variable environment, and can handle a lot of stresses. Yes, we can do very bad things to coral reefs, like these fools from China who allegedly poisoned a coral reef with cyanide just so fishermen from the Philippines couldn’t use it. We need to steward coral reefs well, constantly reevaluating our efforts to find the best balance between too much protection and not enough conservation.  

Author photo of a mother and calf humpback whale enjoying a tender moment in Hawaii. Growing numbers of whales wintering in Hawaii is a sign that, while not perfect, Hawaii’s coral reefs are a far cry from the “slowly dying” perspective claimed by PBS News.