Shifting baselines in coral conservation

Introduction

Reef-building corals are increasingly exposed to warming ocean temperatures. Their immediate response to this rise in temperature is to expel their symbiotic algae and turn white, a phenomenon that was initially referred to as “paling” but is more commonly known today as “bleaching” (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2016). It is mainly for these reasons that corals have been perceived by scientists as both a sign and a measure of the imminent catastrophe facing life in the oceans and, subsequently, on earth. To measure and compare coral decline across space and time, coral scientists have come up with maps, indexes, and color-coded representations. Yet they soon realized that what they regard as today’s healthy reef is, in fact, yesterday’s depleted reef. This problem, referred to as the shifting baselines syndrome, renders most comparisons across time difficult and frustrates the ability to predict the future. The problem is exacerbated in the context of oceans, and further yet in the context of coral reefs, because of the lack of reliable historical records. In fact, many of the coral scientists I interviewed perceive shifting baselines as one of the core challenges facing coral conservation scientists and managers in their attempts to accurately determine coral decline—a project that is typically deemed necessary for effective management and for successful restoration.

My article critically explores the work that the shifting baselines concept does in the world of coral science: how it has shaped research methods and proposed interventions while impacting the emotional climate of coral science. This is an extension of a much broader investigation that I conducted toward my book Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink (2018). Drawing on in-depth interviews with one-hundred coral scientists and managers, the book shows how coral experts have become the vanguard of conservation in the Anthropocene. The relatively short period between 2014 and 2017 during which I conducted my research has been transformative both for reef-building corals and for the scientists who study them. As it happens, the duration of this research coincided with what has come to be referred to as the third global coral bleaching event on record, which impacted parts of the world that were previously thought of as pristine, such as the northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) (Braverman, 2018: 2–3).

In dealing with the volume of interviews and observations gathered for the book over the course of several years, my intuition has been to let the scientists speak in a less mediated way than in many other social science texts. In this dramatically changing world, under the looming shadow of climate change, the role of the coral scientist has also undergone dramatic transformation. Whereas in the not-so-distant past, scientists focused on nuanced studies of their subject species, now they must become spokespersons for their corals if they are to save them (Braverman, 2018: 17). Their newly assumed position, alongside the urgency of their work, are unearthed in this article’s explorations of how scientists contend with the question of shifting baselines. This speaks to a central conundrum in the ecological sciences: how might one practice conservation without romanticizing a purportedly less humanly-impacted past?

The last 30 years have seen a radical transition in the ecological sciences from a static, equilibrial view of ecological systems that is premised on assumptions about a balance in nature, to a framing of issues that incorporates dynamics and variability across time and space as well as themes of uncertainty (Scoones, 1999). In no place is this more apparent than in coral reef science, which has brought to the fore such lesser known processes as symbiosis, chimerism, hybridity, and reticulate evolution (Braverman, 2018: 201–230). Corals become a particularly interesting case study of the shifting baselines syndrome because of the tendency of both marine scientists and the public to assume the pristineness of the oceans.

The shifting baseline syndrome: Introduction and criticisms

The term “shifting baselines” was first coined by Daniel Pauly in 1995 in the context of fisheries management. In his words,

Essentially, this symptom has arisen because each generation of fisheries scientists accepts as a baseline the stock size and species composition that occurred at the beginning of their careers, and uses this to evaluate changes. When the next generation starts its career, the stocks have further declined, but it is the stocks at that time that serve as a new baseline. The result obviously is a gradual shift of the baseline, a gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance of resource species, and inappropriate reference points for evaluating economic losses resulting from overfishing, or for identifying targets for rehabilitation measures. (Pauly, 1995: 430)

The shifting baseline concept has been widely influential in a range of disciplines and fields (see, e.g. Dayton et al., 1998; Olson, 2002). Still, some question its underlying assumptions. For example, in her 2007 Master’s in Science thesis, “Shifting baseline syndrome: An investigation,” Sarah Papworth noted that neither Kahn and Friedman nor Pauly have scientifically tested this theory. Despite the fact that the shifting baselines syndrome is often invoked as a potential problem for conservation, she continued, there is no adequate evidence that it even occurs. In her words: “Although shifting baseline syndrome is a very logical explanation for anecdotal evidence of age differences in observer perceptions of normality, other processes could occur which have no need for such a concept.” Papworth provided an example from a researcher who found that older and younger hunters had similar ideas of abundance for animals in a changing system, as younger hunters based their knowledge on information gained from older hunters. The first problematic assumption of the shifting baselines syndrome, Papworth thus argued, is a lack of communication between generations, as well as a lack of other information on past ecosystems, such as photographs and papers. Furthermore, she added, while “shifting baseline syndrome assumes that older people accurately remember past conditions, [r]esearch has shown that false memories can be induced, so this assumption cannot be justified without evidence.” Papworth finally summarized that there might be another explanation for the so-called generational amnesia, which is that it is not generational at all: “it may be that no one notices change, so everyone (even those who experienced previous altered conditions) believe[s] that current conditions are the same as past conditions” (Papworth, 2007).

In addition to the methodological flaws with this concept, Lisa Campbell et al. depict three problematic ecological assumptions behind the shifting baselines syndrome. The first assumption is “that a natural baseline exists and can be identified and agreed upon,” a notion that ultimately rests on the belief “that humans are outside of nature” (Campbell et al., 2009: 3). The second assumption is that “once agreed upon, baselines can be described accurately,” a notion that is problematic due to the incomplete understanding of contemporary ecosystems, which makes it challenging to understand those of the past. Finally, the third ecological assumption is that “once described, baselines can be restored,” a kind of “back-to-the-future” ecology—a single, stable, and natural state of ecosystems from which human impact can be largely removed (Campbell et al., 2009: 3–4). Despite its problematic assumptions, Campbell et al. do not altogether reject the shifting baselines concept, instead suggesting an interdisciplinary version of it that will incorporate resilience and social-ecological systems perspectives as well as those of resource users such as fishermen (Campbell et al., 2009: 7).

A more sweeping critique of the shifting baseline syndrome has been sounded from ecologist Chris D. Thomas in Inheritors of the Earth. “It is difficult to understand why any particular moment in the continuous passage of time should have special significance,” Thomas wrote, adding that:

The fundamental flaw of baselines—or backwards-facing conservation—can be appreciated once one realizes that every ecological and evolutionary gain that took place prior to a particular baselines date is defined as desirable, whereas all gains that took place afterwards are likely to be dismissed, disliked or repelled (equally, losses before the baseline are accepted, but those after it are not). Arbitrarily move the baseline to an earlier date, and more of the gains are deemed undesirable. (2017: 232)

But what does being “informed, but not circumscribed,” by the past mean, exactly? The concern, as this special issue’s editors articulate, is that “in practice, tools for assessing environmental change based solely on human-centered and forward-looking principles would quite probably become just a tool for continuing the massive project of destruction of the natural world humanity has been engaged since (at least) the industrial revolution” (Lekan et al., forthcoming: 25). Peter Alagona et al. articulated a similar concern in the form of a question: “Is there a third way—a different role for historical knowledge that seeks neither to recreate an imagined past nor to abandon history entirely?” Their response: “The past may be imperfect as a model for the future, but it is an indispensable guide for understanding a world in flux” (Alagona et al., 2012: 65). The editors of this special issue conclude, similarly, that “baselines are still relevant and valuable tools for the assessment of environmental change in the Anthropocene.” Taking its cue from these studies, this article will examine how the debates and tensions around shifting baselines have played out in coral science, and what finding a middle ground might mean in the context of the corals’ rapidly deteriorating environments.

The tunnel vision of coral bleaching: From plain sight to Google street-view

According to James Scott, “tunnel vision” is a characteristic component of high modernist governance, which “brings into sharp focus certain limited aspects of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality. This very simplification, in turn, makes the phenomenon at the center of the field of vision more legible and hence more susceptible to careful measurement and calculation” (Scott, 1998: 11; see also Lekan et al., forthcoming: 8). The focus on sight makes coral science an exemplary case study for this tunnel vision, as the corals’ bleaching or paling is a highly visual process. The shifting baselines syndrome, too, is expressed through highly visual imagery in the coral context.

First and foremost, the shifting baselines syndrome is expressed in observational terms and through plain sight. The older generation of coral scientists have often pointed out that many of their younger students have never seen a healthy reef. Because there are little established historical records, the level to which scientists are comparing the current state is constantly shifting. Here is how Dennis Hubbard explained this phenomenon on the Coral-List, an electronic listserv managed by the U.S. NOAA that networks coral scientists from around the world:

Younger researchers perceive “decline” on a different scale than those of us who were fortunate enough to see reefs in far better shape in general—and I’ll bet our view of “pristine” is just as far off as theirs. Hindsight shows us that the decline had already begun in the “good old days” when we were just out of school. From a geological perspective, when I think of the “good old days,” I’m thinking “early Holocene”. (Hubbard, 2017)

The problems with this personalized, and thus highly subjective and limited, vision have brought about a novel effort to document the grim state of the oceans through advanced media imagery. The nonprofit group the Ocean Agency, comprising a team of media experts and photographers, designed an underwater camera that would document reefs more accurately and efficiently than human divers ever could. By 2016, the Ocean Agency already produced 500,000 images, all accessible to scientists through the Global Reef Record. “It’s unprecedented data for the scientific community,” the Ocean Agency’s director, Richard Vevers, explained in our interview. He further offered that:

Producing a half million analyzed images that show different species in various regions around the world, all using the same protocol, offers the most valuable baseline of coral reefs, globally. For people to go back and revisit those baselines to understand what change has occurred is what we desperately need. This would be the first global study of coral reefs using a standard methodology. The camera has transformed the science. (interview, 2016)

This accelerated production of photographic imagery emphasizes the importance of vision for what is increasingly becoming a spectacular ocean science. ² “Obviously, the big issue [in the ocean] is that no one can see what is going on,” Vevers reflected. This is how he came up with the idea of approaching Google to set up an underwater street-view, “so everyone can go diving.” Collaborating with the Ocean Agency, Google’s “street-view” includes underwater images from 26 countries. “It is our intention to survey all of the shallow reefs in the world,” Vevers told me. Whereas in the past, what happened in the oceans was out of sight and therefore out of mind, he is hopeful that once humans are visually confronted with images that illustrate the deterioration of tropical coral reefs, they will change their climate-related behavior.

Coral measurement and comparisons: The white–red reef hybrid

Although taking snapshots of coral reefs at different moments in time may sound like a simple, objective, and direct practice, the process of determining baselines is in fact never straightforward. As the special issue’s introduction states: “no baseline is ever given by nature or history: there are no baselines without baselining.” Accordingly, the introduction defines baselining as “the set of practices through which the human and nonhuman participants in an environmental issue establish a baseline” (Lekan et al., forthcoming: 4). It urges us to start paying better attention to the processes and logics of baseline production, to “their multiple components and forms, their particular kinds of agency and the possible futures they open up (or cancel)” (Lekan et al., forthcoming: 5). The baselining process is essentially an infrastructure of heterogeneous mediators and devices, including regulatory agencies, scientific standards, datasets, and material samples. “Plastic bags filled with a few grams of soil, a bucket filled up with water, huge ice chunks stored in a large repository; baselining usually starts with the patient and humble extraction, labelling, and collection of a highly heterogeneous array of materials, each one with its own particular properties and affordances” (Lekan et al., forthcoming: 5) What makes for a data sample in the context of reefs?

Beyond its particular contents, a baseline is first and foremost defined by the particular practice of comparing. The combination of aerial documentation of reefs from above and ground truthing underwater has provided a comparative context through which to know and understand global bleaching events and their futures. Terry Hughes is the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. He has been at the forefront of the extensive documentation of bleaching at the GBR and is often perceived by both the media and the public as a spokesperson for these corals. In the midst of the 2014–2017 bleaching event—the third global bleaching event on record (NOAA, 2015)—Hughes led a team to conduct aerial surveys of the reef in order to assess the extent of the bleaching. He was recorded saying: “I’ve spent seven days in the air on a light plane and in a helicopter, crisscrossing the whole barrier reef. … [W]hen I’ve done my last flight, we’ll have flown over about 900 individual reefs. We’ve scored every one for the severity of the bleaching” (Cressey, 2016). The tunnel vision allows an exclusive focus on the color of the corals, which is then compared with bleaching measurements that are calculated through the bird’s eye view of the scientist, who finally estimates the degree of bleaching in “real time.”

Based on this naked-eye, direct, and immediate aerial assessment, alarming figures were produced that have contributed to a growing sense of crisis amidst coral scientists. From a 2017 article published in Science: “mass bleaching has killed 35 percent of corals on the northern and central sections of the 2,300-kilometer-long system. On 24 of the 84 reefs surveyed, 50 percent of the corals have perished, including specimens that were 50 to 100 years old” (Normile, 2016). After the first 2016 aerial survey, Hughes tweeted: “I showed the results of aerial surveys of bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef to my students, and then we wept” (Hughes, 2016a). Taken by the grief of the coral scientists, a Washington Post headline read: “And then We Wept: Scientists Say 93 Percent of the Great Barrier Reef Now Bleached” (Mooney, 2016; see also Slezak, 2016).

Whereas the bleached white skeletons of the dying-yet-not-dead coral were visible from the air by plain sight, after the brownish algae had smothered the dead corals, their condition could only be determined by close-up inspection (Jacobson, 2016), what marine scientists often refer to as “surface monitoring” (Figure 1). Hughes explained that “we [also] did an enormous amount of work underwater. In March [2016] we pretty much had 100 people underwater on any one day. We went to 154 reefs on the GBR and we measured all sorts of things” (Hughes, 2016b). The central agenda behind such measurements, according to Hughes, was to “ground truth” the aerial surveys, as scientists call this process. “We eyeballed 200,000 coral colonies and scored them individually into bleaching categories; we’ve taken tissue samples to look at all sorts of metrics, cell death, genomics; we’re looking at fish” (Hughes, 2016b). OPEN IN VIEWER

In one of the sessions at the 2016 international reef symposium in Hawai’i, which I observed, Terry Hughes emphasized the importance of recorded history for conservation at the GBR. In his words:

In 1998 and in 2002, the last severe bleaching events, Ray Berkelmans flew over most of the GBR marine park. He devised a scoring system for aerial surveys which is color coded. Green is good, yellow is not so good, orange and red are really bad. Those are the categories that he came up with. (Hughes, 2016b)

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Figure 2.

Map of the Great Barrier Reef, showing results of aerial surveys for a total of 911 reefs divided into three color zones: red on top, orange in center, and green at the bottom, April 2016. Courtesy of Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

“We came very close to the whole Great Barrier Reef being bright red,” Hughes told the coral scientists in the conference room. Everyone seemed to understand that by red, Hughes was not referring to the actual color of the corals—which have in fact turned white and then brown—but rather to a code on a map. This linguistic mix-up arguably illuminates the ways in which scientific systems of representation infiltrate the physical phenomenon they stand for, creating a human–nature hybrid, a red–white coral holobiont.

Berkelman’s tricolored maps have been instructive in relaying the gravity of coral bleaching in the GBR to the public, and were reprinted by many media outlets. Nonetheless, Hughes explained that it would be difficult, if not misleading, to compare the 1998 and 2002 categories to those of 2016, and those of 2016 to others in the future. “There’s been a shifting baseline of how we describe the severity of bleaching,” he said at the Hawai’i symposium. “When [Berkelman] wrote his paper back in 1998, he categorized more than 10 percent bleaching as severe; now we think of 30–50 percent as not so bad” (Hughes, 2016b). In other words, although the color red has consistently represented the highest level of bleaching, this color in fact does not indicate sameness across the board. Instead, the numerical values that this category stands for differ, illuminating the slippages that underlie measurements and the intricate ways in which they can be used to mask certain changes behind seemingly straightforward and value-free systems of representation, like the color red on a map. According to Hughes, this phenomenon is a good example of the shifting baselines syndrome and its technical and emotional impacts on coral science. Notably, Hughes’ statement is not so much a criticism of the fluctuating values reflected in the color red, but more a reflection on the inherent biases of scientific comparisons across time. The job of coral scientists, as reflected by the personal example of Hugues, is to bring the value-laden aspects of seemingly technical measurements and calculations to light.

Shifting baselines among coral scientists

Generally speaking, coral scientists have accepted the shifting baselines syndrome as a given. In fact, Jeremy Jackson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography has been at the forefront of promoting this concept’s acceptance in the broader scientific community and has even cofounded The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project in 2003 to promote the use and understanding of this concept in conservation policy and by the general public. Starting with three partners, this project now brings together over 20 conservation groups and scientific organizations. ³ Jackson has also coauthored many of the relevant scientific articles about shifting baselines (see, e.g. Jackson, 2001; Lotze et al., 2006; Pandolfi and Jackson, 2006).

The discussion about shifting baselines in coral science has not focused on proving the applicability of this term nor on its relevance and importance, but has assumed these and revolves around the main challenges that the shifting baselines phenomenon introduces into coral research, especially with regard to the problems with recording and interpreting coral data. A long snippet from my interview with ecologist Peter Sale emphasizes the inadequacies of past and current coral (and broader marine science) baselining practices:

IB: What are the major debates among coral scientists about the usefulness or non-usefulness of the shifting baselines concept?

PS: I don’t think this is debated. It is recognized as a problem that we face all the time, and we are becoming increasingly aware of the value of old, quantitative data when presenting ecological trends.

IB: Are there any voices that call for the irrelevance of this concept, or that seriously criticize it?

PS: None that I am aware of.

IB: More generally: how to measure coral decline if there are significant issues figuring out our [historical] baseline?

PS: The biological data on reefs is of relatively short time span. From the 1920s to the 1950s, biologists primarily stood on top of reefs at low tide—the focus of research was on the reef flat. Only with scuba did we routinely work subtidally. We also have a longstanding problem of lack of consistently-used methodology. Thus, much earlier data, or data from different regions of the world (different investigators) is not easily comparable because even such routine measurements like species abundance are obtained in many different ways.

For example, fish get counted in an underwater survey by swimming a transect. Sometimes the transect is estimated by how many kicks the observer made! More often, its length is measured but its width is estimated at 1 m, 2 m, 5 m, or 10 m. The fact is that our ability to count fish, estimate width, and swim at controlled speed is far worse than we pretend it is, meaning that a 5 m wide transect does not record 5 times the number of fish of a 1 m wide transect, but something lower than this (because more of the fish present fail to get counted). I could go on, it’s a pet peeve of mine!

Then too, we forget the information that is lost as observations and measurements get written on a slate, and then later transcribed into a beautiful excel file on a computer. Most early coral abundance data was obtained by estimating percent cover in a quadrat—the human eye is notoriously poor at estimating areas of irregular shapes within a defined field. All such things make documenting trends through time quite difficult.

There has long been a sort of passive-aggressive resistance to solving some of the problems re standardization of methods, or establishment of permanent field sites to routinely monitor change.

That resistance comes from the natural independence and ego of scientists, coupled with the lack of funding available for true long term, large scale monitoring studies. There is now beginning to be a sufficient record of data on the GBR to say some explicit things about how it has changed. That has happened only because the Australian Government was willing to fund a long-term monitoring program as part of marine park management. The Caribbean is smaller, yet a basket-case of uncoordinated, short-term studies, because no comparable entity has undertaken long-term oversight on a basin-wide scale. This is not because there were not scientists who saw the value in such studies, but because the institutional and governmental management of the region is distributed among so many sovereign entities. (interview, 2017)

Despite these challenges, the shifting baselines concept has been widely and irrefutably accepted by the marine science community. As Jeremy Jackson told me in our interview:

These are not new ideas, and historians just laugh at this debate about shifting baselines. They say, “Isn’t it obvious? Look at the European landscape!” … I mean, it’s like, “Duh!” But in the ocean, there’s all this “pristine seas” bullshit. (interview, 2017)

Again, my point is that the community of coral scientists has mostly embraced the shifting baselines concept as an overarching framework through which they see, know, and understand the history of oceans (see also Alagona et al., 2012: 54). Lisa Campbell et al. explained this tendency more generally: “marine ecologists and conservationists can more easily place humans outside of nature, both for the obvious reason that humans cannot breathe unassisted in water and because the ocean is often characterized as a vast open-access resources where the tragedy of the commons plays out” (2009: 4). Campbell et al. also listed some of the consequences that arise from the separation of humans from marine nature. First, since they seem to exist outside of this natural space, humans enter the ecological equation only as problems. Relatedly, ecological baselines become the only relevant measurement, and marine ecologists thus become the exclusive authority for calculating them. The scientific assumption here is that human-free baselines are the rule, and that scientists describe them and then make management decisions based on these descriptions.

Just how much is at stake with the shifting baselines concept and the assumptions that it normalizes and reinforces about the human–nature divide along a present, past, and future timeline becomes more apparent when one studies the 2008 article by Nancy Knowlton and Jeremy Jackson, “Shifting Baselines, Local Impacts, and Global Change on Coral Reefs” (2008).

Local impacts, global change

Coral reef systems are deployed in the contemporary popular media about climate change in a similar way that tropical rainforests became highly circulated artifacts of global loss of biodiversity in the 1990s. It should therefore not come as a surprise that Nancy Knowlton and Jeremy Jackson’s 2008 article begins with a tropical rainforest hypothetical. “Imagine trying to understand the ecology of tropical rainforests by studying environmental changes and interactions among the surviving plants and animals on a vast cattle ranch in the center of a deforested Amazon,” the article kicks off, and continues:

The soil would be baked dry or eroded away and the amount of rainfall would be greatly decreased. Most of the fantastic biodiversity would be gone. The trees would be replaced by grasses or soybeans, the major grazers would be leaf-cutter ants and cattle, and the major predators would be insects, rodents, and hawks. Ecologists could do experiments on the importance of cattle for the maintenance of plant species diversity, but the results would be meaningless for understanding the rainforest that used to be or how to restore it in the future. (Knowlton and Jackson, 2008: e54)

The relative lack of baseline for marine ecosystems is especially noticeable in the case of reef-building corals. Often referred to as the “rainforests of the sea,” reef corals are the most diverse marine ecosystems, and among the most threatened. Knowlton and Jackson have pointed out in this context that most of the world’s tropical coastal oceans are so heavily degraded locally that “pristine” reefs are essentially gone, even if one ignores the changes associated with rising temperatures and acidity (2018; see also Braverman, 2018). Hence, most modern (i.e. post-SCUBA) ecological studies have focused on reef ecosystems that are moderately to severely degraded, and scientists have a much better understanding of the transition between what they refer to as “human-dominated and collapsed” and “human-dominated and quasi-pristine” reefs. Even the classic studies of Caribbean reefs that began in the 1950s were based on reefs that had very high coral cover but were severely overfished, and the first systematic surveys of subtidal Australian reefs in the late 1960s began after a severe outbreak of the crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) devastated coral populations along much of the GBR. Knowlton and Jackson emphasize that coral scientists are thus left without a clear understanding of how reefs function in the absence of major human impacts (2008: e54).

Their argument might be better understood in the context of an ongoing debate within the coral science community about the need for global versus local actions in coral conservation. While some have argued that local conservation efforts are useless because of the global scale of impacts such as ocean warming and acidification, others have maintained that local conservation actions still matter and should be encouraged. Holding the latter approach, Jeremy Jackson’s research has systematically shown that local coral degradation in fact preceded global impacts. He therefore argues that if the detrimental local conditions were tackled, coral reefs would fare better.

Reading the past, Knowlton, Jackson, and likeminded coral scientists deduce the required conservation actions into the future. To do that, they identify the source of changes: if one finds that local changes were what caused the initial decline of reef corals in the Caribbean, for example, then it would be worthwhile to tackle those, rather than to focus exclusively on dealing with the already overwhelming global changes, as many conservation groups are now doing. Figuring out the historical baselines of coral reef ecosystems and how they have recently shifted is thus at the root of the ongoing controversy about the relative importance of, and synergies among, the different factors driving coral reef decline—including overfishing, land-based pollution, global climate change, and ocean acidification—and what, if anything, can be done to mitigate this decline (Knowlton and Jackson, 2008: e54). Ironically, the further one can trace coral degradation into the past, the more hopeful scientists are that their state is due to a local, and thus more manageable, set of causes, rather than the newer, more detrimental, impacts of climate change and other global threats.

Comparing reefs with, and without, humans

Measuring the state of corals while taking into account their historical baselines has been a challenging endeavor. Coral reefs are physically dynamic constructions, with living corals and other calcifying organisms secreting new skeletons and older skeletons eroding into sand. Moreover, historical baselines are either elusive or, in many cases, non-existent. Still, coral scientists claim that living coral cover has decreased on average by one- to two-thirds worldwide. Considering the lack of historical coral data, how could they come up with these (or any other) figures?

Knowlton and Jackson explain that when lacking historical data for establishing baselines, there are two complementary strategies for comparing reef ecosystems across strong gradients of “recent human disturbance.” The first and most popular approach uses comparisons of present (not historical) sites inside and outside of marine reserves—i.e. those with relatively less human impact, with those of relatively more. This approach has raised problems due to a wide variation in the size, age, and extent of protection in the reserves. In addition, most reserves are smaller than the corals’ home ranges, and have existed for less time than the generational times of ecologically important reef-building corals. Finally, large and old reserves are situated in regions of overfishing and therefore lack what are considered “pristine abundances of apex predators,” providing a less adequate comparison (Knowlton and Jackson, 2008: e54). Despite these difficulties, coral scientists have been using this method frequently, mainly because it is relatively less problematic than drawing comparisons along a temporal gradient. In other words, when there are no proper historical records that would enable them to establish the state of corals in the same geography but in a less human-impacted past, coral scientists assess differences by moving across geographies (but on the same time plane).

A second approach undertaken by coral scientists to overcome the challenges of establishing reliable historical baselines for reef-building corals is similar in terms of its reliance on geography, yet instead of comparing reserves with non-reserves, here the comparison is across broad gradients of human population size at numerous locations, therefore taking advantage of specific reefs that are considered relatively pristine because of their remote location (Knowlton and Jackson, 2008). These contemporary reefs again represent a virtual “time machine” for the descriptive and experimental comparison of ecological processes on minimally disturbed reefs, thereby providing a more ecologically meaningful baseline for comparison between reef ecosystems across gradients of human disturbance. This second method has the advantage of comparisons on ecologically more realistic spatial scales. Using this method, Knowlton and Jackson suggested that: “The remote, uninhabited atolls of the Central Pacific are a case in point and [provide] cause for cautious optimism. Despite increased warming and coral bleaching throughout the Pacific, these reefs still support extraordinarily abundant fish populations dominated by apex predators and among the highest reported abundances of living coral and coralline algae” (Knowlton and Jackson, 2008: e54).

Unlike what one would expect, such inquiries into past conditions and levels of present degradation do not necessarily lead to conservation policies that aim to recover reef corals to their past condition. Toward the end of their article, Knowlton and Jackson offer what they see as the central policy challenge: “How to manage coral reefs locally in a globally changing world so that they retain or regain the critical ecosystem attributes of uninhabited reefs and still meet human needs is the central challenge facing reef conservation today” (Knowlton and Jackson, 2008: e54). Evidently, even the “father” of coral shifting baselines research, and of the hopeful focus on the local, admits that it is too late, or too naïve, to aim for a return to pre-intervention conditions. In his view, determining what reefs need to look like in the future would require a pragmatic balance between what they were in the past and what human needs require them to be in the present.

Previously noted for their more conservative approach toward interventions in reef systems, other coral scientists, too, have been sounding a more pragmatic approach in light of the recent global bleaching events. Along with 18 prominent colleagues, including Josh Cinner, Steve Palumbi, and Jeremy Jackson, Terry Hughes authored an article in Nature that represents a watershed moment in coral science (Hughes et al., 2017: 86). Hughes, who has been at the forefront of the detailed documentation of bleaching in the GBR and wept with his students in the face of these changes, is the first author of this article, which does not shy away from recognizing that “it is no longer possible to restore coral reefs to their past configurations” (Hughes et al., 2017: 86). The authors of this article show that local factors such as management and protection did not help corals when they were exposed to extreme temperatures, thus calling for an immediate change in climate policy. The article ends with an uncharacteristically emotional call: “We should not give up hope for the persistence of Earth’s coral reefs” (Hughes et al., 2017: 88).

Although they have come to realize that reefs will never return to their past state, coral scientists still see hope for the corals of the future. At the same time, they have also come to realize that such future corals will not look anything like those of the past. In light of these realizations, coral scientists have been paving the path toward a new type of conservation, one that seeks to save whatever can be saved.

Resistance to baseline approaches: Coral restoration

Much like the local–global debate, the past–future dichotomy also underlies the divergent approaches to contemporary coral conservation policies. Whereas the shifting baselines syndrome has been used by Jeremy Jackson and his colleagues to suggest that massive degradation had already happened before the global impacts and therefore that conservation on the local scale still matters, it has also been used by many coral scientists to emphasize the importance of the past for designing practical future management plans.

Such a heightened focus on the past is increasingly being criticized by certain coral scientists as nostalgic, puritan, and even dangerous. These coral scientists have been urging their colleagues to consider more future-oriented strategies such as radical restoration, assisted migration, and assisted evolution. They stress that, now more than ever, dwelling on the past is a pointless exercise. One must focus, instead, on what kind of reefs, if any, we would like to see in our future. The interventionist voices in the coral scientific community contend that rather than clinging to archaic views of nature, conservation in the Anthropocene necessitates more adaptive and dynamic approaches if we are to have reefs in our future. OPEN IN VIEWER

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Figure 4.

Researcher adds new coral nubbins (minute coral fragments of one to several polyps) to the midwater bed nursery in Eilat, Israel, after the transplantation of grown corals. Photo by S. Shafir, 2012. Courtesy of Baruch Rinkevich.

Former Director of Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology, Ruth Gates, was an outspoken member of the interventionist group. Gates identified two possible approaches:

I am realistic about where we are and about what the trajectory of change for coral reefs is. For the most part, they are almost all declining. That means it’s not sufficient to step back and wait. People tell me that nature might adapt by itself. It might, but it doesn’t seem to be; not quickly enough at least. And what if we do step back and nature doesn’t [adapt]? The complete annihilation of reefs by climate change would be an appalling outcome. It’s easier to criticize than it is to embrace the idea that maybe we are here: we are hitting this critical point in time.

There’s no doubt [that] we’re already doing that kind of work in forest restoration. So [we need to] talk about things they’ve done well and things they’ve not been able to do very well. What are the best lessons we can take from the forest restoration people—from the cottonwoods, for example? How do we accelerate our field as quickly as possible? Rather than just looking within our field, we’re going to the very best practitioners in other fields. The timeline for me is pressing. (interview, 2016a)

Yet despite the differences between them, Gates and Rinkevich also share much in common. First and foremost, they are both concerned with, and have both warned about, the dangers of mainstream coral science community’s focus on the past and on measuring shifting baselines. Rinkevich told me in our interview:

It is clear that in many cases we do not know what was there before, as the pristine or primeval status (I hesitate to call it baseline status, as the reef statuses are dynamic) of the reefs was not documented. Now, even in cases where we know what was there before, clearly there is no way to go back. Here I introduce the restoration approaches that deal with what we can do now. It is clear that the reef of tomorrow will not be even close to the reef of yesterday, and [that] we cannot do anything to change this situation. All other [management strategies], including the reduction of anthropogenic pressures, enforcing Marine Protected Areas, et cetera, et cetera are all rubbish. (interview, 2018)

Conclusion: The future of baselines

This article has explored the applicability and significance of the shifting baselines syndrome in coral science. For the most part, the existence and importance of this syndrome has gone unquestioned in this context, both because of the perceived pristineness of oceans and due to the smaller and perhaps more hierarchical nature of this scientific community. As such, the shifting baselines syndrome has been used to explain the challenges facing contemporary coral science as well as to favor the local approach in the debate between global-first and local-first coral conservation.

In light of the crucial role of this concept in the coral sciences, it is no surprise that one of the most prominent shifting baselines advocates, Jeremy Jackson, is himself a coral scientist. For many years, Jackson has promoted the study of this syndrome, building networks, and advocating more research to be done to understand the history of coral science through creative strategies and techniques. Because coral records are inconsistent, non-standardized, and unavailable when going back more than 50 years, Jackson and Knowlton have suggested two methods for using different contemporary coral geographies to figure out what a relevant historical baseline might look like. Jackson’s focus on the past to identify future action is probably the most influential and widely accepted approach in coral science today.

But the third global bleaching event and its devastating impacts on reef-building corals around the world—including those who were previously seen as the healthiest and most pristine—has rocked the very foundations of the coral science community, both emotionally and in terms of its mainstream conservation agenda. Increasingly, coral scientists have called this a Titanic-style situation, which requires an “all aboard” approach, one that is willing to take more risks and even make a few mistakes on the way (see, e.g. Braverman, 2018, interview with Hoegh-Guldberg).

Accordingly, a growing number of coral scientists have been challenging the traditional approaches to coral conservation, which they refer to as backward-looking, or simply “backward.” While some of these scientists have assumed novel restoration approaches, such as focusing on strategies for fragmenting, transplanting, and even sexually propagating imperiled coral communities, others have opted for genetic interventions, such as the assisted evolution of super corals. Although they might strongly disagree on what is the most important direction for research and management, these trail-blazing, hybrid scientists–activists agree about one thing: the need to accept and encourage a diversity of conservation strategies. They have also called upon their colleagues to turn toward the future in order to consider what type of conservation actions could help sustain those corals who will have a real chance of survival in the increasingly polluted, warming, and acidifying oceans. Some of these scientists have already made initial steps to design the reefs of the future, leaving the shifting baselines debates far in the past.

Yet despite the dramatic juxtaposition between past and future and the respective coral scientists who carry these temporal signs on their flags—a juxtaposition that has only been heightened in light of the recent dramatic bleaching event and by the tragic projections of coral decline due to climate change—the coral community has in fact been quite reluctant to completely let go of baselines in favor of an open-ended genetic design of futuristic reefs. Unlike in other fields of conservation ecology, where new environmentalism has sparked schisms, animosity, and extreme rivalry alongside collaborative synthetic biology projects, coral scientists are still a small and tight knit community, with a relatively limited number of mentors. Hence, even the radical, future-oriented coral scientists are strongly committed to traditional notions of evolution and biodiversity, and wary of radical interventions, especially through genetic modifications.

Moreover, the extreme global bleaching event of 2014–2017 was a wakeup call to many coral scientists about the need to work together, and has brought the future and past camps closer than ever before. Specifically, those who used to be relatively conservative have become more willing to intervene in certain circumstances. Coral scientists, who have recently needed to contend with the massive and rapid deaths of their life’s research subjects, are showing us all that a middle ground—one that assigns a different role for historical knowledge “that seeks neither to recreate an imagined past nor to abandon history entirely” (Alagona et al., 2012: 65), and that is interdisciplinary and collaborative like the coral herself—is not only possible but in fact might be the only way to sustain coral ecosystems in our fluctuating world.

Highlights

Corals are both a sign and a measure of the imminent catastrophe facing life in the oceans and, subsequently, on earth.