Located on the northern-most edge of the Majuro Atoll, Birkirin Island is privately owned. Decades ago the family created a defacto MPA.

After an introduction to the Birkirin Island family from Dolores Debrum-Cattil, Director of the Marshall Island Conservation Society (MICS), the Palumbi team went to visit the island.

1. ENCOUNTERING
When we first joined family members on Birkirin Island, they explained how their grandparents brought them here to visit, enjoy and protect it, and how much they too wanted to bring their own grandchildren here some day.

2. CONSULTING
The family asked if we could check the health of the corals around the island. 

How would the corals fare in future heat waves? 

Would the corals bleach?

What could they do to help the corals and the island?

3. SAMPLING
From around the island, we sampled small fragments of four coral species (Acropora digitifera; Pocillopora meandrina; Porites lobata; Porites rus) and transported them across the atoll to the testing center on Sherwood Tibon’s dock. 

4. TESTED
We prepped the coral samples and placed them in our heat test tanks.

In the heat test tanks, we increased the water temperature to what corals would experience on a very hot day at low tide (35 deg C).

Surprisingly the corals were not affected at this temperature.

On day 2 we bumped the simulated heatwave up a degree to 36 deg C. Surprisingly the corals were not affected at this temperature either.

On day 3, at 37 degrees, some corals began bleaching, but were still the most heat resistant corals we tested across the entire atoll.

5. TEST RESULTS
As an example, the photo below shows four colonies of A. digitifera (C1, C2, C3, C4) in two different tanks at 37 deg (F2 and F3) and two at normal reef temperature of 30 deg C (F1 and F4).

All the heated branches are lighter than branches at 30 deg, especially C4, which are completely bleached. These corals were sampled from site SR3 in the NW corner of the atoll.

The second picture is the same experiment but done on Birkirin Island corals - and here none of the heated corals got paler. None of them bleached.

6. TRANSPLANT
As part of our conversations with the family, they gave us permission to show them a simple way to transplant heat resistant corals. With their help along with some simple tools and supplies, we built coral test nurseries to accommodate this research. 

7. REPORTING
We presented test results to the family, showing them how the Birkirin Island corals as well as other atoll coral reacted to the heat tank experiments.

We also shared the test results with other Majuro groups on how varying water temperatures on coral from different locations impacted coral bleaching.

8. PROTECTING
While not able to directly protect against climate change, the family has protected Birkirin Island corals from pollution, over-fishing, and reef damage. Their actions helped sustain a strong and healthy reef.

Our results may help the family see ahead - to understand that their protected corals do have a future. And that the continued protection has a future.

9. MPA
The family is currently deliberating the protected status of Birkirin Island. There are many reasons for their commitment to this island and its future. 

 We hope our tests and analysis assist in their decisions.

Belize sits at the southern end of the Meso-American coral reef, among a long line of coral atolls, islands and barrier reefs.

It is home to some of the most protected reefs in the Caribbean, and is looking to increase the coral area it protects.

Our project is to help the Belize conservation effort by testing if different areas proposed for protection have corals that are resistant to future heatwaves.

Like much of the Caribbean, summer waters are hot and getting much hotter in Belize. When we were there in June 2023, temperatures were climbing and corals were already bleaching at Caye Caulker.

We saw much less bleaching at Turneffe Atoll.

We are working with the Belize government and local NGOs to find where the most heat resistant reefs are located, setting up a training center for coral heat testing, and looking within some of the proposed new marine protected areas for heat resistant corals.

We hope to provide some answers by summer 2024 when the next stage of the Belize protected area plan is discussed.

Our work continues in The Marshall Islands and Belize. Research is expanding to include Hawaii, Indonesia, and Palau.

We have reached out to communities in the Virgin Islands to see if we can help since heatwaves are an increasing problem there.

^{©Steve Palumbi, Palumbi Lab, Stanford University}