Where Corals Lie a Natural and Cultural History J

Where Corals Lie A Natural and Cultural History J. Malcolm Shick

reaktion books For Jean and in memory of Charlotte Preston Mangum (1938–1998) Teacher, Mentor and Friend

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London n1 7ux, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

The Coral Reef, composed by Horace Keats (1895–1945), text by John Wheeler. Permission to reproduce extract given by Wirripang Pty Ltd, Australia.

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isbn 978 1 78023 934 7 Contents

Prelude: Where Corals Lie 7 1 Defining Coral 11 2 On the Nature of Corals 43 3 The Mythos, Menace and Melancholy of Corals 77 4 Conjuring Corals 115 5 Coral as Commodity 153 6 Coral Construction 187 7 A New Age of Corals 219 Coda: What Lies Ahead? 261

Appendix: Maps Showing Locations Mentioned in the Text 266 References 270 Select Bibliography 282 Glossary 284 Acknowledgements 290 Photo Acknowledgements 292 Index 294

Prelude: Where Corals Lie

Coral . . . presented a problem in the eighteenth century . . . since with the development of natural history it finally became necessary to say whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral. Perversely, it exhibited characteristics of all three. James Hamilton-Paterson, The Great Deep: The Sea and its Thresholds (1992)

n Richard Garnett’s mid-Victorian poem that mysterious and equivocal – they were variously lends its title to this book, the poet is allured called ‘lithophyte’ (stony plant); ‘madrepore’ to drowning in ‘the land where corals lie’. This (mother of stone, from Greek poros, not pore, Itrope continued a long tradition wherein the reefs or alternatively ‘porous mother’, from Latin built by stony corals were associated with human porus); ‘millepore’ (thousand pores [porus]); and passing, pathos and petrifaction, and jagged reefs even ‘zoophyte’ (animal–plant), a term applied to were rightly feared as lethal navigational hazards sundry ill-fathomed invertebrates. Such ambiguity in maritime expeditionary narratives by the likes lent itself to manifold interpretations, including of James Cook and Jules Dumont d’Urville, and mythological and magical imaginings, as well as in novels they inspired. The distantly related philosophical musings on the very nature of life precious red corals were born of death – the (illus. 2, 3 and 4). decapitation of the Gorgon Medusa by Perseus Speaking through a chorus of sea beasts in and the supernatural transformation of bloodied The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Gustave Flaubert seaweeds, or from the flowing blood of the demon harked back to the situation before the nature of king Bali, crushed by Vishnu. corals was known: Owing to their rough arborescence, for centuries colonial corals were lyrically described Plants are no longer distinguishable from as submarine plants of wonderfully diverse animals. Polyparies [the skeletal framework botanical construction and coloration, or of coral colonies], which have the air of perhaps the mineral productions of plants. For sycamores, bear arms on their branches . . . others they were stony concretions precipitated And then the plants become confused with from seawater, without any biological stones. Stones look like brains, stalactites mediation. This mineral nature was especially like breasts, fleurs de fer like tapestries obvious in those coral reefs that wrecked ornate with figures.1 ships. The ‘flowers’ on coral trees seemed also to have animal attributes, thus completing Thus, chimeric corals confounded classification the tripartition that kept calcareous corals and were what the thoughtful (or susceptible) viewer chose to make of them, causing the art 1 Pandora Reef, April 2017, 2–3 m (7–10 ft) depth, historian Barbara Maria Stafford to muse, ‘What photographed by Eric Matson. This coral community do you do with beings that are neither one thing contains both healthy and bleached corals in the nor the other?’2 aftermath of unprecedented mass bleaching in two The animality of the coral polyp was successive years on the Great Barrier Reef. Corals confirmed by the mid-1700s, when modern that died earlier are overgrown by algae. science was emerging and colonialism took

7 where corals lie

2, 3, 4 Manifestations of corals (clockwise from left) as lithophyte (p. 34 in [Joseph Pitton de] Tournefort, Académie royale des sciences (1700)); madrepore (plate 55 in John Ellis, The Natural History of Many Curious and Uncommon Zoophytes (1786)); and millepore (p. 103 in James D. Dana, Corals and Coral Islands (1872)). Opposite page: 5 In 1880–81 Gustave Moreau painted the Nereid Galatea (La Galatée) hiding from Polyphemus in a grotto, surrounded by taxonomically diverse zoophytes such as red corals, sea anemones and sea lilies (crinoid echinoderms). naturalists to lands and archipelagos where coral A History of the British Zoophytes in 1847, reminded reefs lay, and where scientists linked biology to readers that the compound word ‘zoophyte’ geology. Soon afterward, Linnaeus placed stony originally ‘designated a miscellaneous class of corals taxonomically in the ancient Lithophyta beings, which were believed to occupy a space and precious corals among the Zoophyta, amid a between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and grab bag of poorly known invertebrates. George where the characteristics of the subjects of each Johnston, at the opening to his second edition of kingdom met and were intermingled’ (illus. 5).

8 where corals lie where corals lie

Another half-century after Johnston, corals were and their creations (the largest biological found to live in ‘reciprocal accommodation’ with structures on earth, visible from space) are seen unicellular algae inside their own cells, a solar- as ‘rainforests of the sea’,4 greenly symbolic of powered symbiosis that allowed coral reefs to fragile marine biodiversity. thrive in the clear blue desert of tropical oceans With the loss of the algal partners in depauperate in planktonic prey. This symbiosis temperature-driven events of mass coral bleaching, (a literal ‘zoophyte’, if you will) has been a focus the stark bone-whiteness of bleached and of coral study ever since. moribund coral colonies contrasts shockingly Growing familiarity with coral reefs and with the rainbow palette that inspired Matisse. idyllic atolls in the late nineteenth century It would be a further irony were worsening ocean and throughout the twentieth changed our acidification to corrode the persistent cultural perception of them again. Henri Matisse’s symbol of coral reefs. Despite their massive solidity, sojourn in a Tahitian lagoon in 1930 forever increasingly corals are a poster child at risk from, affected his art. The aesthetic allure of corals and a canary in the coal mine warning of, global and reefs also captivates receptive scientists climate change. From dangerous to endangered, who study them in nature and draws a wider ambiguous to emblematic, deathtrap to paradise public attracted by tropical beaches and lagoons to boneyard. What has transformed them anew? teeming with colourful fishes, or by a scuba- To answer this question, and as an object lesson diving holiday in a submarine wonderland that of what is at stake in the coming decades, we need increasingly features in the portfolios of the best to know where corals lie in our social history, nature photographers. Today, reef-building corals including the arts, commerce, geopolitics, have become ‘photogenic doe-eyed invertebrates’3 philosophy, science and the imagination.