Rita Ines Sellares Blasco, CEO of the Dominican Foundation for Marine Studies (FUNDEMAR)
Researchers in the Dominican Republic are helping to extend the sex lives of hard corals to give them a better chance against disease and bleaching.
A 2019 study found that coral reefs and their ecosystem services are worth $1.14 billion annually in just three areas of the Dominican Republic: Punta Cana, Bayahibe and Cayo Levantado. But by 2023, more than 90% of the corals on the reefs surrounding the Caribbean nation have bleached.
Rita Ines Sellares Blasco, a Spanish researcher and general director of the Dominican Foundation for Marine Studies (FUNDEMAR), says that due to the loss of coral cover, corals cannot reproduce sexually: when they release their gametes (sperm and eggs) into the water, the colonies are too far apart.
“Gametes do not meet despite synchronized spawning,” she says. “So, through the efforts of collecting and fertilizing gametes, we ensure their successful reproduction and the production of new recruits that will be implanted in the reefs.”
Sellares explains that corals can reproduce asexually or sexually, but researchers have found that sexual recruits are more resistant to bleaching and tissue-loss disease in stony corals than clones or gametes from wild colonies.
“If you reproduce them sexually, each new individual will be genetically different, which will increase the resilience of the colonies,” she says. “Genetic diversity is the key to the survival of any species.”
Coral reefs have faced several critical events such as bleaching diseases causing increasing population declines. The 2023 bleaching event combined with the SCTLD resulted in a loss of 40 to 60 percent of coral cover and some coral species.
“That is why it is so important to ensure assisted sexual reproduction, despite the challenges faced year after year due to the loss of coral cover,” she said, adding that coral reefs are the basis of the country’s economy, including food sources and employment opportunities in the fisheries and tourism sectors.
“Coral reefs are the first protection to face hurricanes and tropical storms, their loss implies the loss of protection and an increase in expenses for flooding and loss of infrastructure after a hurricane or storms, which increase from year to year,” she says.
Coral gamete collection
From Spain to the Dominican Republic
Sellares grew up by the sea on the Costa Brava in Girona, Spain, and after starting her studies in marine sciences, she participated in different volunteer programs.
“I always knew I wanted to dedicate my time to something related to the sea,” she says, adding that after graduation she took a course on coastal marine ecosystems in the Dominican Republic and volunteered for humpback whale research.
Sellares explains that it was a key moment because she met the founder and professor of FUNDEMAR, Idelisa Bonnely, known as the “mother of Caribbean marine biology” and who died in 2022.
“At that time, I thought my stay in the DR was temporary, but Idelisa, as a natural leader and mentor, was preparing me to follow in her footsteps with FUNDEMAR,” she says, adding that she assumed full leadership of FUNDEMAR in 2015.
Sellares says that research in the Global South must be shared to help provide solutions to global challenges; every institution or individual can contribute.
“In our case, we have been able to create an important network of partners and at the same time a network of collaborations throughout the Caribbean, where we share and receive,” she says, “we learn at the same time from each site and understand the importance of local adaptation and the creation of local projects.”
Transplantation of sexually produced coral recruits.
Saving Turtles on an African Island
Another Iberian researcher who found herself leading a marine conservation NGO in an island nation is Estrela Matilde, former executive director of the Principe Foundation.
Environmentalists in Sao Tome and Principe, a small, biodiverse African island nation, are using a “GPS in a bottle” to track plastic pollution plaguing their coasts.
The island of Príncipe was formed 31 million years ago and its rainforest is one of Africa’s most important bird conservation areas: 57% of the country’s 49 bird species are endemic according to the Convention on Biological Diversity — but its beaches are also a critical habitat for sea turtles.
Matilde says the NGO helped persuade a generation that it was no longer acceptable to eat turtle meat and advocated for the country’s first network of marine protected areas, but today the turtles face a global threat: plastic.
“Despite our local efforts, plastic from elsewhere is washed ashore every day: we find turtles with their systems full of plastic every season and 25% of the videos collected from the 10 turtles we video-tagged showed plastic in the vital habitat of Principe’s coastal waters,” says Matilde.
