As a seven-year-old on holiday with her family in the Bahamas – she saw the coral reef for the first time. That was the moment when Camp fell in love with the sea. He recalls, “It was the infatuation with the unknown that really drew me in.”
Now, in ’33, the British-born marine biologist, a leading researcher on coral conservation and resilience at the University of Technological Sydney in Sydney – was fighting to save the marine wonders she first captivated as a child.
The work of the camp involves searching the world for the world’s most difficult and most resilient corals – species with excellent potential for survival from climate crisis.
She has studied corals grown in mangrove weddings around the world, including in the Caribbean, Seychelles and Indonesia. In 2016, she and her team first discovered mangrove coral in New Caledonia in the South Pacific. In 2019, for the first time, they documented identical mangrove corals in their own backyard … on the perimeter of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
The mangrove lagoon is a shallow body of water found near the coast of the tropics, due to the trees and plants suitable for growing in freshwater.
In the lagoon, “the water is naturally warm, naturally acidic and the oxygen conditions are low,” Kemp says. On the rocks, the coral is dying, as climate change equals ocean conditions, warmer, more acidic water and lower oxygen levels – but in the mangrove lagoon, the coral thrives. The aim of the camp is to identify specific traits that can withstand mangrove corals in hostile environments.
The camp and its team collect coral samples from the mangrove lagoon, bring them back to its lab in Sydney and perform DNA analysis to learn more about their genetic makeup and how they differ from reef corals.
Australia In Australia, camp mangroves rotate pieces of coral between the main part of the lagoon and the reef.
Mangrove corals are transplanted onto reefs to test which species can thrive there, she says, while reef corals are moved to mangrove habitats to assess how they react in more challenging environments. The aim of the camp is to work out if scientists will one day be able to use these resilient corals to replenish areas on rough rocks from climate change.
Cable operation is strictly controlled with coral pieces attached to small frames with cable ties, so that they do not spread beyond the test area. This ensures that there are no unintended consequences for moving species between different habitats.
The camp says she has been a “sea optimist”, but ultimately, her job is just to “buy time” against climate change.
“Time is running out and it’s urgent,” he says. “If we don’t take action, this vital ecosystem … will be lost or at least worsened to a point where we can’t really go back.”
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