Expression, loss, and potential for recovery of Ocean Memory in coral colonies affected by Stony Coral Tissue Disease (SCTLD) and the interconnected human community of Puerto Morelos, Mexico

This project aims to document the Memory within a reef that has experienced an 80% decline in coral colonies over the past 40 years (McField et al., 2020). We selected Puerto Morelos Reef National Park in Quintana Roo, Mexico, a significant site within the Mesoamerican Reef System, known for the human community’s close relationship with marine resources, particularly coral reefs.

To achieve our goal, we will conduct surveys and interviews with stakeholders to explore strategies for conserving the collective ocean memory as perceived by the community. We will compile and classify scientific and technical information relevant to the reefs, integrating community knowledge into conservation efforts. Simultaneously, we will monitor the ecosystem acoustically and visually, focusing on colonies identified during restoration efforts that had been affected by Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD): dead, sick and recovered. This disease is an emerging threat, potentially becoming the deadliest disturbance in the Caribbean causing colony mortality within weeks (Alvarez-Filip et al., 2022). 

Through data analysis, we aim to deepen our understanding of the relationship between reef Memory and environmental changes as Puerto Morelos has transformed into a renowned tourist destination. We will discuss key concepts like what is Ocean Memory, how healthy coral colonies store it and how does SCTLD alter it? 

Finally, we will develop a virtual platform to enhance the community’s connection with the reefs, housing data and analysis results as a repository of scientific, social, cultural, ecological, and administrative knowledge. The platform will provide valuable insights into reef conservation, management, and the preservation of collective memory.

A startling manifestation of climate change is the loss of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean from an area one-third the size of the US. Sea ice keeps the sun’s radiation from overheating the planet, but the ice is now caught in a feedback loop exacerbating its demise. Marine bacteria, the smallest and most abundant of Earth’s organisms, live within this threatened habitat. There they face multiple environmental extremes, including the ever-changing architecture of the ice, driven by hourly-to-seasonally fluctuating temperatures. Although sea ice may look solid, it contains an interior liquid network of interconnected, brine-filled veins and channels – the inhabitable space which shrinks in winter and expands in summer.

Do sea-ice bacteria forget (short-term) or lose (long-term) memory of this unique architectural home and how to live with its extremes? We are currently exploring this question (with other funding) by considering DNA-based mechanisms of bacterial memory and resilience within sea ice, but without the benefit of alternative ways to understand the ice and its interior liquid networks – its negative and positive spaces for life. Here we propose a collaboration between scientists and artists of multiple practices to explore aspects of the fluctuating internal architecture of sea ice that so far have escaped scientific inquiry. Within the time constraints of the grant, we aim to generate a manuscript inclusive of artistic work and lay the groundwork for an art exhibit with the paper as didactic text and for interdisciplinary conference panels for broad discussion of the results.

Pollution and violence are connected in profound and multifarious ways that are complex and often hidden, yet tethered via underlying dynamics that we wish to explore. We will leverage the approaches developed in the ocean memory project for case studies of the Mississippi delta region to elucidate, reveal, and communicate hidden parallels and feedback loops between violence and pollution. A single larger convening combined with continuing online meetings will be used to elucidate hidden histories and linkages to be further examined in educational and community-engaged activities. 

To reveal these hidden phenomena, we will prototype a user-populated atlas of pollution and violence using pilot examples from the focal region. To communicate the hidden, we will also design related classroom content that will be tested in a course taught by proposal lead Eben Gering within the Gulf Coast region in Spring 2024 [HONR 1060 – Water and Sustainability]. This course will facilitate student engagement with the maturation of ideas and perspectives that emerge through the proposed discussions and convening within the grant period (i.e. Fall-Winter 2023), including “hands-on” activities such as populating the nascent atlas with place-based biographies, histories, and/or data. 

This first use-case study of the atlas is intended to bring us closer to a scalable framework for interactive inquiry that engages broader communities, in order to remember and confront historic episodes of violence and catastrophe in ocean and coastal realms.

The Archival Oyster Project will seek to unearth narratives of multispecies kinship that emerge from within the ‘Forgotten Coast’ on the Florida Panhandle. Oysters represent both an old and well-known industry and a supposed new ‘frontier’ for coastal livelihoods and living shorelines. Archival Oyster: Reclaiming Coastal Legacies through Oral History and Printmaking is a collaborative project that will discuss the oyster from the voices, narratives, and stories of queer and BIPOC communities which are often unheard within the seafood industry. 

Through a collaborative print publication, Sara Inácio, Joanna Booth and Adrian Cato will work with members of the Apalachicola community to discuss their relationship to the oyster and deep connections to the once thriving coastal industry. This work of oral history interviews, archival research, and collaborative artmaking will culminate in an independent and open access publication as well as multiple interactive installations.

Driven by a desire to connect the public to the deep ocean in the face of our climate crisis, the Immersion Project is a vision for a large-scale, immersive and interactive art installation inspired by deep-sea coral forms which will have a second life as an artificial reef in the deep sea. The Immersion Project is an interactive and experiential form of outreach that will harness a broad public audience, diverse in demographics, through its placement in multi-disciplinary venues including art, science, education-based, and public spaces. This project will have a significant positive environmental impact on the Gulf of Mexico’s deep coral gardens damaged during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The exhibition will also be a platform to shed light on our delicate ecosystem. Through public talks and panels about the reef damage, we can forge a dialogue about environmental stewardship in the face of climate change and other human-borne impacts. Through a coordinated effort with Dr. Erik Cordes, advisor on the NOAA Programmatic Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan, a modular installation will be deployed as a form of remediation through direct human intervention in the process of ecological recovery and restoration.

 The unique dual role of the Immersion Project, as both traveling art exhibition and artificial reef, underscores a key mission of the project: to create connections through immersion, both between the viewer and the deep ocean environment through a compelling art experience, and between the submerged artificial reef installation and the ecosystem that it supports.

For several thousand years people have lived on Sapelo Island, modifying its terrestrial and marine ecosystems in deliberate as well as unexpected ways. The natural environment of Sapelo is defined first by its extensive saltmarshes whose rate of photosynthesis rivals the most productive kelp and rainforests. These saltmarshes, fed by rivers and tides, support numerous invertebrate (oyster, crab, snail) and vertebrate (bird, fish, mammal, reptile) species and serve as nurseries that disperse animal populations well beyond Sapelo, inland as well as into the ocean.

These interacting species use chemistry as a language to communicate and exchange information. The odors of Sapelo also imprint memories on human residents and visitors, but these odors are sensitive to environmental degradation and loss of community. This project will seek to restore ocean memory by capturing the scents of Sapelo in a multisensorial exhibition, translating the chemical structures of coastal scent molecules into soundscapes, paired with perfumes created from the odor sources of Sapelo saltmarshes, forests, beaches, and swamps.

The Eastern Oyster has existed on the coast of Sapelo Island for thousands of years, recording environmental conditions in its shell. As conditions change, the oysters move but leave the legacy of their shell reefs which slows coastline change. This Ocean Memory of the Oyster has repeatedly appeared through time on Sapelo Island, not only in the coastal waters, but also in human history and memory. Oyster shells were part of indigenous shell rings on the island; later oyster shells, likely including some from the archaeological remains, were used in tabby plantation constructions. 

As the previously enslaved Gullah Geechee people built their homes following the civil war, the sturdy tabby continued to contribute to their buildings, and now are a critical part of coastal protection infrastructure on the island. Our team, composed of an oceanographer, an anthropologist, an archaeologist, and a community leader, will skillfully interweave the story of the oyster as an agent of ocean memory to show how past presence of the oyster influences modern processes. 

This narrative will be shared as a open-access academic journal article, with additional outputs including plans for coastal protection on Sapelo Island to benefit the Hog Hammock community, an oyster-centered art installation in the Savannah airport, and an online compilation of our narrative and resources on Ocean Memory and Sapelo Island. The installation and associated QR code link to the online resources will serve as a way to disseminate our thoughts through a publication and through art.