Marine biologist Elvira Alvarado, known as “mother of Corail”. At 70, she dives and always a type of coral IVF to help save threatened reefs.
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San Andrés, Colombia – Almost 50 years after having put a combination for the first time, Elvira Alvarado still remembers his coral reef off the Coast of the Caribbean of Colombia.
“Everything was alive. And it was green and bright orange. And there were fish. And there were huge things. And they were corals. It was amazing,” she said. “Can you imagine paradise? This is paradise.”
At 70, Colombian marine biologist Elvira Alvarado is still diving, looking for and forming a new generation of scientists. Its mission: to save the coral reefs disappearing from Colombia by reproducing the coral by in vitro fertilization. His dedication to life to these marine invertebrates earned him the nickname: “The mother of Colombian corals”.
Corals are vital ecosystems that provide food, shelter and breeding ground for some 4,000 fish species. They protect the shores of erosion. They even support tourism by attracting divers and divers.
However, illnesses, pollution and the increase in temperatures in the ocean make a huge number. Since the 1970s, more than half of all the Caribbean corals have died.
“I saw them die. I saw them turning white,” said Alvarado of the Colombian Island of San Andrés in the Caribbean Sea, where many coral reefs formerly exotic and garden are now sterile.
Juliana Vanegas, a marine biologist who works with Alvarado, explains what is happening.
“Corail is still alive, but when they are bleached and do not feed, they start to become lower and lower,” she said. “And if it lasts enough time, the death of the coral, essentially of famine.”
In addition, corals weakened by overheated disease or water have much more difficult to reproduce. Thus, here on San Andrés, Alvarado and his team of a dozen divers, dressed in diving equipment, lend a hand through the fertilization in vitro, or IVF.
The technique was launched by the Australian scientist Peter Harrison. It is a question of collecting coral eggs and sperm, fertilizing them in a laboratory, then transplanting them to existing reefs. Alvarado has become the most energetic supporter of the technique of Colombia.
Elvira Alvarado and a marine biologist colleague fertilize coral eggs and sperm in the laboratory, using a pioneer technique to restore damaged reefs.
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“We cannot stop what is going on,” she said, referring to climate change and very fatal threats such as the disease of loss of stony coral tissues, which was reported for the first time in 2014 and spread in the Caribbean. “But we can try to replace the coral that is dying.”
Alvarado was first attracted to the ocean by television. As a young girl living in the United States, she was fascinated by programs like Sea hunt And PinballAbout a dolphin of bottles that exceeds most humans in the series.
She returned to Colombia in the 1960s to become one of the country’s first marine biologists to focus on the restoration of coral reefs. Along the way, she met Jacques Cousteau, the most famous oceanographer in the world that visited her university.
“We sat down and he was talking to me. It was a dream,” she said.
Elvira Alvarado, in the Caribbean Sea off the Colombian island of San Andrés. At 70, the marine biologist is still diving, looking for and forming a new generation of scientists.
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Alvarado was a natural submarine. She learned to release diving – without air tanks – at a depth of 72 feet. She first did the research on cancer involving sharks. However, while Coral began to die, she focused on restoring reefs by cultivating a new coral.
The timing is everything. The coral reproduces once a year, about a week after the full moon. This gives the Alvarado team here on San Andrés just a small window of opportunity to dive and collect coral eggs and semen.
Alvarado moves gracefully underwater. About 30 feet low, she and her team place net with collection tubes around selected coral. Then, after nightfall on a second dive, they check the collection tubes. Last night, they came empty. But tonight is another story.
“They have engendered,” shouts an ecstatic alvarado, which then rushed into a makeshift laboratory.
There, they and the team mix eggs and sperm and place them in plastic bins filled with water. Under the microscope, they seem creamy white in the shape of raspberries. Soon, coral newborns will be placed in nurseries by the sea for 6 to 12 months and then brought back to the reefs.
And because the team has gathered coral genetic equipment which seems more resistant to heat and stress, their efforts are designed to reproduce more resistant varieties. The trick, says Alvarado, is to regenerate the coral faster than they die. But it is also realistic.
While coral reefs will not be as diverse as when they have been when it started diving in the 1970s, it says: “We will have reefs resisting warming.”
The nets are placed on the coral to collect eggs and sperm, part of the efforts to fertilize and restore the reef.
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It is also proud to have supervised dozens of young marine biologists – mainly women – who all seem to love it.
“She is a very inspiring woman,” explains María Fernanda Maya who directs the Blue Indigo Foundation that works to restore the reefs. “She is Coral’s mother in Colombia.”
This is why, when Alvarado finally hangs up his fins, his heritage will live.
“When I started this, we were only three people – two students and I. And look at what we have now,” said Alvarado. “It will continue even after my death. This is the right thing.”
