In disaster-prone Vanuatu, photos show sea animals returning to battered reefs. Can recovery happen?

OFF THE COAST OF EFATE ISLAND, Vanuatu (AP) — Beneath the turquoise waters of Vanuatu, amid a graveyard of broken coral, a moray eel peers from the branches of a staghorn colony. Nearby, the feathered arms of a yellow sea lily sway in the current and a turtle grazes on algae growing along the reef. These flickers of life hint at a slow but hopeful recovery.

For the past decade, the South Pacific island nation’s coral reefs have faced one punishing blow after another. Cyclone Pam in 2015 hit from a direction that left one reef particularly exposed.

“The way the waves came in actually smashed the coral,” said John Warmington, a longtime resident of Vanuatu who’s been diving the reef for more than 10 years. “I can remember our first dive after the cyclone and my friends and I were all in shock. Coral heads turned over, smashed staghorns — all laid bare.”

In the days that followed, heavy rains washed sediment into rivers that emptied into the sea, blanketing corals in a thick debris that blocked the sunlight they need to survive.

https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/vanuatu-climate-change-coral-reefs-1d8c816e228df04b23430f92dea748dc