Rescue the Reefs

Imagine diving into the water off the South Florida coast. You glance at a school of minnows, spot a stingray and then look down to see a barren, gray and decaying ocean floor. The fact that this image could soon be reality is what inspires the mission of the Rescue a Reef program at the University of Miami.

Coral reefs are an essential part of underwater ecosystems—they protect coastlines from wave damage, provide habitats for underwater organisms and assist in carbon fixation. They are among the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “about 25% of all marine species are found in, on and around coral reefs.” But they’re in grave danger. Three coral species are listed as endangered on the Endangered Species Act, while 22 others are listed as threatened.

The primary threats to coral reefs, according to the NOAA, are pollution, the effects of climate change, and unsustainable fishing practices. The most common results of

Coral reefs are home to an abundance of sea life, making their distruction a threat to an entire ecosystem.

these phenomena are what is known as coral bleaching. Coral reefs can become “stressed” when a change in water temperature or increased pollutant particles occur. This causes algae, an essential symbiotic organism for coral reefs, to leave the coral. Without the pigmentation, energy source and protective nature of the algae, corals are left fragile and susceptible to disease.

The rising ocean temperatures also affect the health of coral species—as the water warms, its acidity levels increase. “Carbon dioxide is an acidic gas, so when it dissolves into the water, it lowers the pH,” said Chris Langdon, a marine biology professor at University of Miami. Acidification of the ocean makes it hard for coral to reproduce and more likely to die at a faster rate than it can grow.

One of the worst diseases for a vulnerable coral to come into contact with is white band disease. It destroys coral tissues and creates a distinctive white band by melting away algae and exposing the coral’s underlying skeleton. In the 1970s, it nearly wiped out the Staghorn and Elkhorn corals, two vital species in the Caribbean area. “Staghorn grows fast, and it creates 3D structures where tiny fish can hide. From an ecological standpoint and a habitat standpoint, the Staghorn coral is super important,” said Langdon.

It is still unclear where this disease originated, but some experts believe human behavior is to blame. “It may be from sewage that got released into the water,” Langdon said. Focusing

Rescue a reef encourages the community to get involved in coral restoration by tabling, screening movies, offering community dives and partnering with UM’s own scuba club for special trips.

on Staghorn restoration in particular may be especially helpful in overall reef restoration. “If we replace it, it will produce a bigger change on the reefs in a shorter amount of time than boulder corals that grow extremely slowly,” Langdon said. “We are now taking actions to recover it. The numbers are still low, but increasing.”

The University of Miami launched the Rescue a Reef program in 2015 with a purpose to propagate threatened coral species and help regrow the

dwindling population. According to their website, the organization has planted over 25,000 coral species since they began. “Rescue a Reef is our local effort,” Langdon said. “There are many throughout the Caribbean trying to do the same thing.”

While Rescue A Reef does help raise and replant coral, they also focus on community outreach. By having people plant young coral from a nursery themselves, they’re educating community members about the importance of coral reefs and the effect of their decline in underwater ecosystems. “Rescue a Reef is really the citizen science component of our lab, where we bring members of the public out on coral restoration trips to witness the problem hands-on, to be tangibly part of the solution and to learn from scientists in the process,” said Madeline Kaufman, a team member of Rescue a Reef.

To re-propagate the Coral reef populations, Rescue a Reef typically uses a nail or cable tie to hold the corals in place. But they’ve also been working on other ways to replant the coral. “There is pretty exciting stuff going on,” Kaufman said. “One of our master students has been experimenting with how to use cement to plant coral. It has gone really well and it’s way cheaper. You use piping bags, like to ice a cake, and fill them with cement to attach a coral to the reef. Then, it will grow onto the reef.”

Those who can’t dive can still help their coral restoration effort. Rescue a Reef hosts many events on land to raise awareness of the endangered species they are trying to protect. “We do the trips, but we also reach out with tabling events and movie screenings,” said Kaufman. “We want the community to participate, but mostly we want them to learn about coral restoration.” People can also engage in individual actions such as wearing coral safe sunscreen, choosing seafood from sustainable fisheries and volunteering for costal protection organizations.

Here’s something we can all agree on: there’s only one planet Earth. Every human being—no matter their culture, race, religion, or political beliefs—lives here. So how did we get to a point in American history where efforts to protect our planet for future generations insinuate a political agenda?

For many Americans, it is difficult to recall when science became linked to one side of the political spectrum. But today, we can’t deny that the two major political parties in the United States hold staunchly different views on what are scientific facts versus corporate agendas.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2014 that there is a more than 95% probability that human activities over the past 50 years have warmed the planet. “In terms of the world around us right now, we see climate impacts happening just about everywhere we look,” said Katharine Mach, a lead author of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report and an associate professor at University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, higher average global temperatures have contributed to everything from ocean acidification, rising sea levels, more frequent extreme weather

patterns and human health. “The sad fact that climate change has become a political issue does us all a gross disservice,” said Larry Peterson, a professor in University of Miami’s department of marine geosciences. “Climate itself is apolitical. The changes occurring now are real and many are clearly linked to human activities. The current and future impacts of these changes will affect all of us regardless of party, nationality or belief system.”

To have significant impact, many experts agree that change to things like carbon emission and waste management must be done on a large scale through governmentsupported regulation. “It will not suffice… simply to encourage people individually and voluntarily to build green and drive hybrid,” said environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott in the book “Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis.” “On the contrary, the only hope we have to temper global climate change is a collective sociocultural

response in the form of policy, regulation, treaty and law.” At its core, the nature of the Democratic Party is to favor more government regulation with a goal of protecting consumers, and in this case, their future. Republicans, on the other hand, value the idea that regulations hinder a free market economy, and therefore tend to back away from imposing on large corporations. The economic benefits of the natural gas and petroleum industries are undeniable—according to the American Petroleum Institute, 10.3 million jobs in the U.S. were supported by natural gas in 2015. But so are the long-term consequences—the International Energy Agency reported that oil and gas use made up 55% of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in 2017. Finding a balance to satisfy human society and ecological sustainability is the balancing act of a century. “It’s critical to recognize that our choices for reducing emission of heat trapping gases over the next five to 10 years are absolutely essential. If we plow ahead as we are, we may well set ourselves on a course for two to four times as much warming as has already occurred,” said Mach. “Limiting warming substantially will

require ambitiously moving forward with those technologies that exist now that we know how to do, we just need to deploy it to scale.”

In a 2016 Pew Research Center survey, 67% of U.S. adults said climate scientists should have a major role in enviromental policy decisions. But according to the same data, 71% of liberal Democrats said an international agreement to limit carbon emissions can make a big difference compared to 27% of conservative Republicans. The existence of an environmental crisis cannot be a topic of debate between any candidates or parties. That conversation is half a century old. The discussion now must be about how we can deal with it. “The kind of change we’ve seen in the planet over the last 100 years would normally take place over thousands of years. But even in terms of the planet, we cannot really look at the past for an effective guide for what’s going to happen in the future,” said George Gonzalez, a UM professor of political science specializing in U.S. environmental politics and policy. “We are in profound crisis. Everything we do here going forward has to be directed at saving civilization and saving humanity.”

Overflowing green recycling bins filled with paper, plastic and other discarded materials line our campus sidewalks. Although some of the items in the bins will indeed be repurposed, a majority will still end up in landfills or oceans. This student-run business is tackling the issue.

Taking initiative to stop the endless pollution cycle, new student-run startup “Cycle” is revolutionizing the way students, faculty and guests recycle on campus. The company’s vision is to “reshape the way recyclables are disposed of in order to create a more sustainable future for our planet.” So, what does a sustainable future look like? Why is it necessary?

The University of Miami currently practices single-stream recycling, which allows students to dispose of recyclable items in green bins. While perhaps convenient, single-stream recycling result in high levels of contamination. This occurs when soiled or non-recyclable items are mixed with true recyclables. Examples of contaminated items include used takeout trays, greasy pizza boxes and pretty much any container that still has food in it. Nonrecyclable plastic, such as bags or drinking cups, are also considered contaminated. To avoid contamination, the university must pay extra fees for those goods to find their way into the right recycling stream.

Searching for a solution, UM junior Anwar Khan and the Cycle team worked with university officials to launch a new recycling system on campus. Students can now discard their recyclable plastics and aluminum in Cycle’s reverse vending machine—which is programmed to detect and discard contaminated material. The machine, located near the Herbert School of Business, is programmed to a free “Cycle” app that allows users to receive compensation in the form of “cycle points” for items they recycle. While the hardware-software pairing seems elaborate, utilizing its services is not. Once students download the free app, using the Cycle system is a simple three-step process: 1.Place recyclable item in the machine. 2.Use the app to scan a barcode that will pop up on the machine’s monitor. 3.Watch your Cycle Points add up in the app and donate them to a cause of your choice.

Khan and his team have spent over two years fine tuning the system, and Cycle plans to deploy nine more machines across campus throughout the upcoming year. Eventually, the Cycle model could replace traditional recycling programs on campus, operating as a subscription service paid for by the University to handle its recycling needs. Such a model could be scalable, having the potential to expand to other campuses and similar institutions for all those to interact with.

In 2018, Cycle was just an idea that came to Khan as he threw away a plastic water bottle in the freshman dorms and thought to himself, “this isn’t great.” Khan was a member of the University of Miami’s TAMID program, which at the time was looking for a new start-up idea. He pitched his high-tech plan to the organization, which is a local chapter of a nationwide consulting group for college students that supports entrepreneurship and development of business skills. The idea took off, and Khan began building a team and travelling the country talking to investors and competing in business pitch competitions similar to “Shark Tank.”

The Cycle team, which is now made up of eight University of Miami students, has achieved success in these competitions and garnered enough capital to turn their plan into reality. According to Khan, one highlight of his travels for Cycle was taking part in the Zero Waste East Summit in New Jersey, a new convention that focuses on bringing together businesspeople, NGOs, investors and climate and policy experts to further the discussion on sustainable business. His team won the University of Miami Business Plan Competition, the TAMID Tank Miami and Miami Founder’s Institute Competition. He credits his team’s professionalism for the success they’ve achieved thus far.

While Khan is the CEO and founder of Cycle, the business also functions thanks to the efforts of CFO and co-founder Noah Barrows, Head of Strategy and co-founder Colin Hively, co-founder Conor Pohl, CTO Harrison Mount and VP of Marketing and Social Media Julie Young. Together, the team hopes their company will help the University to “utilize recycling to build a better future.”

For Cycle, a huge part of this future involves giving back. To that end, “cycle points” students earn through the app can’t simply be deposited at the moment, but will be converted into cash that is donated to charity. Although Cycle has its own charitable cause—the construction of a school in rural India—customers can select a charity to donate to with their “cycle points.”

This project is personal for Khan, as a trip to his family’s village as a child inspired him to pledge some of his future earnings to improving education for his peers in India. He looks at the relationship between the causes of sustainability and scholarship as “turning recyclables into education.” Thus far, the University of Miami’s administration has been supportive of Cycle’s goal of turning recyclables into funding for education, or at the very least keeping them out of landfills. Khan’s business aims to solve a serious and well-documented issue here on campus. They’re working to usher in a new, innovative era of sustainability for the University of Miami.

From butt workouts to pubic hair grooming, Health & Wellness enlightens you on everyday health hacks as well as social issues. Read more to explore issues on racial disparities in healthcare or about new innovations in disabled technology.