Future for Coral: Highlights and behind the scenes

            I’m back at the Atlantic. Its February and a moody sky watches over the dramatic churning of waters frustrated by winter winds. The air temperature is about 9 degrees and the water temperature is about 11. Yesterday I received over £7000, which has put an end to over 2 years of financial insecurity and means I can finally knuckle down and get my work published. I didn’t receive the money from a wealthy foundation or a scholarship for my academic excellence, but from a crowd of well-wishers and concerned ocean lovers.

            Crowdfunding is both an incredibly novel and an age-old invention. In essence it is no different from any sponsorship drive; you tell people what you want money for and if they like your idea, they give what they feel. The difference is the tool of social media, which has allowed this well-worn technique to bloom and reach new heights. ‘Future for Coral’ was my first ever attempt at crowdfunding and in many respects, my first time to really interact with social media in a serious manner. I thought I’d share some of experience from my point of view as the, now jubilant, owner of the campaign.

The Atlantic in February

            Since the financial crash in 2008 it has felt like convention funding, for almost everything, has dried up. My supervisor looked into figures for deep-sea marine biology and found that available funds have dropped to a third (70% reduction) of what was available 4 years ago. Two years ago, I found out my PhD funding had been pulled. My friend Andrew was visiting me in Kenya, where I was working at the time, and offered me some money to help. I felt terrible; the thought of taking money from a friend. He explained that he and his wife Emma thought that my work was worth it, so I should take the money. I cautiously agreed, and from there an idea was planted.

             When I returned to the UK in May last year, my funding was still a mess. I decided I needed to do the crowdfunding idea. I watched Amanda Palmer’s TED talk on the ‘art of asking’ a dozen times and set off to Cornwall in July to film the promo video with my mate Mike. The reason it took nearly 6 months before I ran the campaign was a combination of desperate hope that some money would come in soon and terror about putting my work and myself on a pedestal for all to see. Several grant rejections later I decided to go live with Future for Coral.

Filming in more clement weather

            The most important thing in any social media exercise is ‘reach’. This means how many people are seeing your ‘content’, be it the webpage, article or whatever. This much I knew before I started. What I had no idea about was how hard it is to extend one’s reach. You cannot simply put something up on the net and expect people to access it. I put up the campaign, told all my friends about it saw the readership start going up and the first donations go in and felt pretty good about myself, so I sat back a bit to watch. Rooky error. The excitement died down and nothing happened.

            At this point I realised with horror that I was in the position I had feared would happen all those months of thinking about doing this; all my friends and colleagues watching while I floundered. In panicked desperation I started to send messages and tweets to everyone I could think of. Every time I did it felt like I was inviting one more person to watch me fail, but I couldn’t stop. I had to make this work. Readership went up a few more donations went in, and then it stopped again. This pattern continued for the first 3 weeks of the campaign. Even at the two-week mark, when I received a fantastic donation from Somerville college of £2000, it still felt like I was treading water. Not until the final week did the social media reach a tipping point and the content started to generate its own reach. The graphs below show readership on the platform over time and donations. The graph about readership also tracks my emotions over the past few weeks pretty well too!

            The second most important factor in crowdfunding is the content. Can you put up something that people will ‘like’, ‘share’ and of course most importantly donate to? As a scientist I am used to expressing my ideas carefully, noting my uncertainty, over several pages. All of a sudden I have 140 characters to convince you that what I’m doing is important and you should give money to it. Yikes! This, however, was much more fun than promotion. It was great getting to wax lyrical openly and freely to my growing band of fans. Initially I thought people would be interested in the human aspect of coral reef decline or the personal aspect of my work. Turns out people went crazy for underwater factoids and pretty pictures, so I adapted my content as I went along, and in the end it was the stuff that most excites me as well.

            Apart from just beating my drum on social media I went out and did a few stunts as well. The first was to paste my bedroom window with Future for Coral stuff. I got so sick of staring at Twitter that I needed some art and craft therapy and through this ended up getting an article in the Oxford Mail! I gave a talk at my graduate college, which I thoroughly enjoyed and then was bowled over when the college decided to give me £2000 and write an article about me for the alumnus network. I was starting to feel pretty cool. My final stunt was to set up a stall at the East Oxford Community Market and spent a lovely morning chatting to people about my work and various tangents on this, while giving out free baked goodies. To my complete surprise George Monbiot, the famous Guardian columnist walked past with his family. “George, will you please retweet something for me?” I blurted as he tried to buy some veggies. He agreed and that evening my final video update was tweeted to his 116,000 followers. After that, my social media grew on its own.    

           

         So in the end I achieved my goal despite spending most of the time not really believing I would. It is of course thanks to 80 or so wonderful individuals who gave me money over the 4 weeks. As a scientist I wanted to understand a bit more about who gave and why, so here’s a few factoids about the donors.

Proportion of donations from different groups

• Proportion of page visitors who donated – 5% (apparently this is about the average)
• I received 50 pledges from friends and acquaintances, 22 from random people who liked the campaign, 2 from academic sources, and 4 secret donors, including one secret donation of £850. I am dying to know who this was! (The amount raised by these different groups is in the pie chart.)
• The average donation by friends was £61.40 and from randomers was £47.95. These amounts were closer together than I had expected.

So now that the campaign is done I will go back to a quieter life of analysing data and writing for conservation groups. I can’t wait! However, I cannot get over the amazing feeling of seeing thousands of people reading my facebook page or the incredible words of encouragement and excitement from people willing you to succeed. If you want to continue to follow my story, check this blog from time to time. I will also keep the facebook and twitter going, but at a much slower rate than the last few weeks. Thank you once again to everyone. Every encouraging word, facebook share, retweet and of course donation, has made this a reality.

Many places, one goal

The conservation of nature is complex endeavour. My research and work is centred around general issues, which can be theoretically applied anywhere in the world. The difficulty comes when one tries to use these principals on the ground, in the local context. For example, 'no-take' marine protected areas (MPAs) are great, but how does applying this principal on the ground in Mozambique look and how are the challenges there different to the challenges in Sumatra, or anywhere else for that matter? In this blog I'll introduce you to some of the amazing places where I gathered my data, and try to give you an idea of the huge variety in place and context, while all united in a common goal of ensuring a future for coral reefs.

Watamu Marine National Park (WMNP), Kenya

Watamu was once a sleepy Swahili fishing village, halfway along Kenya's Indian Ocean coastline. Since the 1960s the town has grown with the arrival of tourism, to visit its pristine white beaches and wildlife treasures both on land and under the waves. Early on in this process, Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS), the government body concerned with conservation and national parks, recognised the importance of the reefs around Watamu and the potential for marine tourism. An area of 10km squared was gazetted as a completely protected, no extraction MPA in 1968, making it one of the oldest national parks in the world. Since its inception nearly 50 years ago, the park has provided refuge to hundreds of species, including endangered species, such as the Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) and the Giant Grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus). It has also been source of income for the local population through tourism revenue and the numerous opportunities this creates. The balance between conserving nature and creating revenue is never an easy, but in Watamu there are numerous charities, community groups, and businesses, such as A Rocha Kenya who I worked with for 3 years, all committed to promoting and using WMNP sustainably and for the benefit of the local people. 

Cliffs and lagoons near Watamu village harbour

Vamizi Island, Quirimbas Archipelago, Mozambique

The Quirimbas archipelgo in the far north of Mozambique, is made up of 32 islands, surrounded by some of the healthiest and most biodiverse coral reefs in Africa. Northern Mozambique has had turbulent recent history suffering 15 years of civil war and continuing low level violence to this day. Under such conditions, conservation efforts take low priority as people's focus is shifted to the humanitarian crises and day to day survival. Since 2005 Vamizi Island has been managed as an eco-resort focussing on high-end, low-impact tourism and since 2010 the World Wildlife Fund for nature (WWF) has been carrying out research and conservation in the area based from Vamizi. These conservation efforts are crucial considering the various pressures the reefs of Vamizi are likely to face in the 21st century, and in particular the huge oil extraction potential that is just starting to be realised in this area. Good data are now available for this area thanks to the efforts of Vamizi Lodge and WWF, and this is being used to advocate and create dialogue with the oil companies working in the area.

Incredibly diverse coral community at Vamizi Island

Kuramathi Island, Rasdhoo Atoll, Maldives
The Maldives evoke visions of paradise in many people's minds, and as a result these tiny coral islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean receive over 1 million visitors a year, dwarfing the resident population of just 300,000 people. These islands are all small, low lying and remote, formed at the edges of atoll structures, which are built entirely by coral reefs. Catering for all those Western tourists, with their fresh water consumption, food preferences and waste production, on such fragile islands is a major challenge. Hence in the Maldives, the benefits and risks of tourism to the environment need to be carefully balanced. Kuramathi Island, in Rasdhoo atoll, is relatively large island for the Maldives being nearly 2km long and is entirely developed as a resort for approximately 800 guests at any one time. The resort understands the importance of their coral reefs, not only for their guests to enjoy spectacular marine life that the Maldives are so famous for, but also for building the island, which would erode into the sea if it were not for coral growth. The island has an environmental centre, encourages responsible water sports and diving behaviour and works with researchers (including me!) to monitor the health of their reefs.

Typical Maldivian islands, small, low-lying and remote

Pulau Enggano, Sumatra, Indonesia
Located 100km offshore from the mainland of Sumatra, Pulau Enggano is a remote, but relatively large island swathed in rainforest, with a tiny population of just 1500 people. Unlike the other places I have mentioned, it is not a location which receives any tourists, except the odd determined surfer, driven there to surf the perfect barrel waves which crash on the islands continuous fringing reef. People live simply, growing vegetables and fishing what ever they need from the reef. The coral is in good condition, and fish stocks are not being overtly depleted. However, change is coming fast to this region, which will not leave Enggano untouched. Already buyers on the mainland send people out to Enggano to collect rare natural resources, such as saltwater crocodile skins for making bags and boots and sea cucumbers for the Chinese market. Very little is known about the island or its coral reefs, and based on discussions with various people in the area, suggests that I was the first Western researcher to collect data about its reefs. A social enterprise called Innovare have taken interest in this area, exploring the possibility of beginning aquaculture of exportable products, to bring development to this island in a sustainable manner.

My host grandma in Enggano cooking rabbitfish on an open stove

All of these places will use the data I collected during my visits for different purposes, whether that is sustainable tourism in Kuramathi or protecting the national park in Watamu. I have mentioned only 4 locations, all with very different contexts, which I hope gives you an idea of the diversity of situations and solutions in coral reef conservation.

The blog 'Aquatic Primate' is run by marine biologist, Benjamin Cowburn and is currently moonlighting as a platform for stories and media relating to the crowd funding campaign, 'Future for Coral'. Please consider supporting and following this campaign through the following media:
Platform: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/futureforcoral/?
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Future-for-Coral/647465975364032
Twitter: @Futureforcoral