Emma Thomson (00:14):

Okay, so how many of you guys are scuba divers?

Speaker 2 (00:18):

I want to.

Emma Thomson (00:20):

That counts. Absolutely. It 100% counts. I cannot recommend it enough, 100%. The first time I ever went scuba diving, I was 19. Actually, this month I figured out, is the 10-year anniversary of this moment. It’s a weird full circle moment for me.

(00:38):

First went scuba diving at 19. My dad woke me up at 5:00 in the morning on a family vacation, like an absolute savage. “Emma, Emma, you want to go scuba diving today?” I’m like, “Yeah, hush. I need to go back to bed.” He goes, “Okay, jump in the car. Let’s go. We’re ready.” I’m like, “You are absurd.”

(00:54):

Okay, so we get in the car, we drive down to Key Largo, actually right here in the Keys. We do a little class in the morning. We go out on the boat and I’ve been snorkeling before. I’ve seen a reef. I’ve seen the fish. I’m like, “Okay, this is like snorkeling just with the really excessive amount of weight and gear on you. It’ll be fine.”

(01:12):

I could not have been more wrong and I could not have underestimated more the impact that diving would have on my life. The minute I hit the water, the minute my eyes opened, I was immediately overwhelmed. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Just the colors, the life, the movement, the just veracity of everything going on. That reef had me an absolute awe. And I was in it. You’re underwater with it.

(01:41):

You’re not watching through a screen or sometimes snorkeling feels like you’re watching through a screen because you’re still separate from it. But man, to be down there with them, follow a little hogfish down the reef or just sit there and stare at this one little fish that drills into the reef and it pokes its head out every once in a while. And I get to see that on my own just for kicks.

(01:59):

Oh my gosh. And I started to have this feeling the first time, very first time I went diving. I don’t know what it was, but I know what it feels like. It feels like when you have a very complicated puzzle you’ve been working on for a long time, and you slide that final piece right in the middle. You’re a little excited.

(02:18):

Or if there are any writers in the group and you have really bad writer’s block from time to time. But that first moment where it releases and your words pour out of you and it feels so authentic and you’re happy and joyful and you’re running with it and you’re just so excited to your very core. Bubbly, almost. That’s how I felt. I felt like my life finally clicked into place. And I know this is going to sound a little like woo-woo, but I swear, I swear, I started to see the world a little clearer after the first time I went diving.

(02:50):

My entire soul reacted with the water. It said, “You’re here. Welcome back. Thanks for coming.” Oh my gosh, I am getting goosebumps because it really was just so powerful to me. I’m so thankful that I was able to have that moment that just struck me to my absolute core, because I’m sure all of us have passions. That you throw your entire heart and soul behind. But to be able to have that passion smack you in the face and go, “What took you so long?” That was so powerful to me.

(03:19):

I started studying and I went to school and I interned with Coral Restoration Foundation down in the Florida Keys, and I was learning everything I could and absorbing all of the knowledge about the reef, my home, my people, my fish, whatever. Wanted to know everything. And so I started to realize that the reef that I went diving on, the one that I had this powerful moment on, not healthy, not great, not even that pretty. And so I go, “Why are you taking me the bad reef? Why are you taking me to the bad reef?” And they go, “It’s not the bad reef. It’s a good reef. It’s a great reef. It’s one of the best we have anymore.”

(04:00):

And then you start to dig into that and what does that mean? And why is this the best that we have right now? I realized that it’s so much bigger than I anticipated because the oceans, we know the oceans support the entire earth. We wouldn’t have anything without our ocean. Anything. It is so important to us. Most of the breathable oxygen that we get on earth comes from the ocean. It’s not from the trees as many people believe. It’s from microscopic algae out in the ocean. It just continues to serve us from there.

(04:32):

One of the things that ocean really does is it absorbs a lot of the impact from climate change. But coral reefs, being one of the most sensitive ecosystems on earth, in the ocean that absorbs so much impact from climate change, they’re getting impacted every turn, in every direction. We’re experiencing disease like we never have before. I don’t know if anybody’s heard of stony coral tissue loss disease. Absolutely horrific disease.

(05:01):

If you ever seen pictures of a coral reef and you see that massive mounding coral head and you’re like, “Wow, that thing is enormous.” That coral grows about, I just made myself flinch, that coral grows about one centimeter a year. When you see those massive ones, that thing is easily 500 years old, easily. Stony coral tissue loss disease? Three days dead. Without hope of coming back.

(05:26):

We are experiencing bleaching. We were even talking about that in the circle earlier, coral bleaching is definitely a thing. I’m getting goosebumps again. Our oceans are absorbing a lot of the carbon that we are outputting into the world. And just like that carbon makes the atmosphere warmer, it makes our oceans warmer. Those corals get very stressed when the water gets hot. The relationship between the coral and the algae that lives in its tissue breaks down. Algae dips. And coral can come back from bleaching.

(05:53):

That’s something that I always want to tell people about the reef. I don’t know if you can tell, I’m very excited about it. But corals are really cool because they can come back from bleaching. They’re not dead. It’s not a death sentence. It’s only a death sentence if the environment does not come back to a stable point. And that’s what we’re seeing all the time, is that the way our climate is changing right now, we’re not coming back to a stable point at all.

(06:20):

There’s this one reef in particular down in the Keys that I out-planted hundreds of corals on. We would grow the endangered coral, bring them back out into the reef, plant them there and go, “Grow babies, grow.” And just hope for the best. Monitor them.

Speaker 3 (06:31):

What’s the site called?

Emma Thomson (06:32):

It’s called Pickles. It’s called Pickles Reef, good old Pickle boat reef. And I just had a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton of planting there. That was my baby reef. I knew that thing like the back of my hand, better than the back of my hand. I could tell you where every fish lived. I knew that reef. And then in 2017, hurricane Irma came through. I’m sure most of us remember Hurricane Irma being the cat 4 storm. It was 5 at its peak, but it was 4 when it hit down in the Keys.

(06:58):

We expected there to be damage on the reef. Reefs go through hurricanes all the time. It’s actually how some corals reproduce is being broken by big storms and hurricanes. We’re like, “Yeah, there is going to be damage on the reef. Don’t even worry about it. We restored them. Our corals are going to be cool.”

(07:13):

My excited little self goes, “Can’t wait to get back to Pickles.” I was expecting, like I said, to see some damage, but what I wasn’t expecting to see was nothing. Nothing. Not one coral that I had put was still there. There was not one sponge. There was not one sea fan. It looked like somebody came down and poured a bunch of concrete over the reef. There was nothing.

(07:42):

I got lost immediately when I was there. There was nothing. That was the second time I ever cried under water because that was just extremely, extremely heartbreaking. It’s this ecosystem level problem. One of the reasons why I was so happy to be talking with you all, before I got put in the spotlight, was because we were talking about the big changes that we need to do, these big solutions that we need to think of in order to make sure that we’re not causing an ecosystem level extinction event, which is barreling towards us. Barreling towards us. It’s something that I care so deeply about.

(08:21):

I just want people, want everybody to come diving with me. Everybody. I was walking in with Akuna, believe that’s how you pronounce your name. Akua earlier, excuse me. And I was like, “Have you ever been diving? You want to come with me?” She goes, “Heck no. Absolutely not.” “That’s fine. We’ll go on a glass bottom boat. You don’t even have to get in the water. I’ll take care of you.”

(08:40):

But I want everybody to come. I want everybody to see it because what I found to be the most powerful thing in my life was already being degraded and was already being hurt and was already dying. I want everybody to care and come and see it before it’s gone so that we can make sure it doesn’t stay gone. Anyway, who wants to go diving? My people. Okay, you come see me, I take you out.