In the summer of 2026, 50,000 people demonstrated in Stockholm for a more powerful climate policy. The UN announced that the world will miss the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. The forests of southern Europe were consumed by fires and one of the Himalayan glaciers collapsed in a wave of mud and death.
At the same time, something is going on under the surface that should get more attention. Coral reefs, the underwater equivalent of forests, are also dying in the heat. Before the classic "Silent Spring" (1962), which is usually called the starting point for the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson wrote in "The Edge of the Sea" (1955) about the coral reefs at the southern tip of Florida. She glides along in a small boat, peers down through a bucket with a glass bottom and poetically describes the reef below as: "swept by currents instead of winds, where the feather corals form the scrub and the elkhorn corals the trees of stone".
Three years ago, the water off Florida became as hot as a bathtub, periodically exceeding 38 degrees, and American scientists were forced to collect corals to save them. Recently it happened again. The University of Miami moved corals to deeper water or onto land in saltwater tanks, ahead of an expected "Super El Niño year" with extremely high temperatures. At the end of August, the highest global average temperature in the world's oceans was also recorded since the measurements started almost 50 years ago (SR 25/8).
In 2023, coral bleached and died to an unprecedented extent. More than 95 percent of the important elkhorn corals in South Florida disappeared, which also led to attempts to cross Carson's stone trees with more heat-tolerant individuals from Honduras. An elkhorn coral can grow over two meters high and often looks just like the horns of a twelve-thorn. Together with other species, these majestic coral trees build ecosystems that more than 500 million people and around 30 percent of all marine species depend on.
It has been known for more than thirty years that coral reefs are severely affected by the emissions that heat and acidify the oceans. These global threats interact with local ones, such as destructive fishing and pollution. Many coral reef atolls have also been blown to pieces to test the nuclear weapons of the great powers, something that still leaves deep traces. In total, about half of all coral in the world has already disappeared, thus threatening the livelihoods of more than half a billion people, who depend on coral reefs for food, shelter from storms, and income from tourism and fishing, among other things.
When the sixteenth international coral reef conference recently concluded in Auckland, New Zealand, more than two thousand scientists from nearly a hundred countries participated. It ended with Professor Christian Voolstra, moved to tears, reading lines from a song by Rage Against the Machine as a call to action for coral reefs: "All hell can't stop us now".
The scientists' figures on threatened reefs, and the proposals for solutions, should be a world event here as well. But hardly a word has been mentioned in the Swedish media. At the same time, politics is moving too slowly or in the wrong direction, at home and internationally. It's like the coral reefs are slowly boiling away while the world's decision makers turn their eyes away or bury their heads in the populist sand for cheap, short-term points.
Why don't we react more strongly? This year, National Geographic released a documentary about the Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason, based on his book "About time and water" (2021). The book is about his family and melting glaciers, but also about dying coral reefs. He talks about a conference at the University of Iceland where one expert after another spoke about the climate and ocean acidification and the millions of people affected. But it could, he states laconically, "just as well have been about the impact of the policy rate on the state budget". Why this measured attitude towards the deep crisis of the planet, even among the scientists themselves? Perhaps Professor Voolstra's reaction in Auckland was a sign of something new; that what we researchers call reef grief has become so widespread that it is now also openly displayed.
Still, it's not too late. The other week, the organization Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network released the largest coral reef study ever. The results are alarming, but show that a global collapse of coral reefs is not inevitable. There are many thriving reefs left to fight for. They can be saved if we stop burning fossil fuels and address local problems such as overfishing and pollution, the researchers write. We should all listen, not least the politicians. Otherwise, the ocean will soon be as desolate and silent as Rachel Carson once feared.
Seven years ago, a memorial plaque was erected over the Icelandic glacier Okjökull, which was declared dead after melting away. The inscription, "A letter to the future", was written by Magnason: "This monument confirms that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did. August 2019. 415 ppm CO2". (Concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere).
A similar plaque should be erected at one of the world's most species-rich coral reefs in Indonesia's Raja Ampat, which I visited in April. There, the reef is still in good shape, but the water is getting warmer year by year, while tourism grows like an avalanche and controversial mining plans threaten the area (DN 2/3). The text could read: "This reef is, at the time of writing, still very much alive, with enormous biodiversity. In the next hundred years it and all other coral reefs are at risk of bleaching and dying from global warming. We know what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. October 2026. 426 ppm CO2."
