Project Reefoir

Hina is impatient. Full moon was only a few days ago, and the Daramak could arrive at any moment. She almost can’t believe it. After dragging her little brother Tahi out of sleep, they had gone down together to the beach, excited to be the first to witness their arrival.

After all these years of waiting, every minute feels like an eternity. Wrapped in a light piña cloth made for the occasion, Tahi starts to fall back asleep on the sand. They need to get used to the lower temperatures again, and despite the warm air, he is shivering slightly. To keep herself busy, she examines the seeding units once more. The whole community spent weeks getting them ready, following the guidelines they deciphered through the Macro-Rhizal Network.

The lagoon seems quiet. It is hard to imagine the chaos that once reigned: boiling muddy seas, the foul smell of dead animals and algae washing ashore with all sorts of plastic contraptions, plants drying out and the coral reef falling silent. Thick air, violent cyclones followed by terrible floods, repeated epidemics. Eventually, they all had to leave.

Hina and Tahi were born on the Big Island. So were their parents and grandparents. Four generations ago, most inhabitants of Reef Island had found refuge in higher altitudes, leaving the shores of their homeland behind.

To overcome the guilt, the shame, the pain, and to hold onto the hope of return, the people of Reef Island had kept the memory of the sea alive. Through songs, rituals, and stories, they celebrated the open ocean, the mangrove forests, the lagoon, and the reef. Bright corals, swirls of fusiliers, flying rays she had never seen, dried octopus she had never tasted, long days spent at sea in the breeze. These existed vividly only in dreams, handed down over time from one generation to the next.

In a fog of toxic fumes, Hina and Tahi’s forebears had escaped the heat to reach the mountains of Big Island. By necessity, they had to reinvent themselves, surviving off the scraps that remained, relearning to take care of the scarce sources of life they could still feed on: small insects, mushrooms, dried plants, and roots.

From their heights, the people of Reef Island kept celebrating the endless water. While the rest of the planet’s civilizations also collapsed, bringing human life almost to a standstill, they held on. By clinging to their memories and clearing the springs and waterways of suffocating waste, little by little, renewed freshwater slowly cascaded back down towards the sea.

It would take decades, perhaps centuries, for the toxicity and heat to stabilize and retreat completely, assuming humanity didn’t choose to go back down the path of self-destruction. Yet temperatures had begun to fall.

One day, they received a message from a remote island community calling themselves the Daramak. Remoteness and favorable currents had allowed chunks of their reef to survive. Using seeding devices left by scientists before the collapse, they held onto an assisted restoration technique, developing it over the years, monitoring and treasuring the most resilient coral reefs alive.

With the heat receding, the Daramak had decided to reach out by sending long-distance messages through an experimental device named the Macro-Rhizal Network.

When the message reached Big Island, a small group of those most keen on biology and communication had gathered and spent months trying to decrypt it.

 “Eureka! Help is coming. We are going home!” People cheerfully exclaimed.

The news, at first, had fractured the community. Some were skeptical; some had grown accustomed to mountain life. But a small group was ready to return. Hina and Tahi’s family were among them, convinced they stood a chance of actively restoring the reef and their culture: seeding corals and living with the ocean again. Project Reefoir carried so much promise. 

“But what if we fail again?” Hina finds herself doubting.

Looking out at the horizon for any sign of the Daramak people, Hina recalls the story of her lineage and everything that brought them to this point. Tahi mumbles in his sleep. The stars are fading one by one. Night’s darkness is ready to give way to the morning.

“It can’t be long anymore,” Hina thinks anxiously.

She gradually makes out her surroundings. The colourful sand around her still bears traces of microplastic and remnants of humanity’s industrial past lie around, covered in barnacles and plants despite all the cleaning. 

“Nature is truly amazing!” she thinks, unable to help smiling.

Upon their descent, they had been surprised to find that not all life had vanished. Amongst the old reef structures covered in algae, there were still some small weedy corals… and fish! Damselfishes and wrasses had survived, even showing signs of adaptation. So did the vegetation on land, growing over the waste. Evolution and reclamation were ongoing.

“And now we have chep tu,” Hina thinks. Since their descent, they had to adapt to reigning scarcity. Chep tu, grilled goatfish eyeballs, had become one of their staple foods, and Hina had prepared some to welcome the Daramak and their coral larvae. The remains of every fish were now turned into fishaliser to nourish the soil of their gardens.

The small signs of resilience were comforting but they didn’t soften the weight of what it meant to return. Descending had been frightening. They had to start from scratch, relearning, reviving ancient practices as best they could, and taking care not to disturb the fragile populations of species just beginning to rebound. They had to be cautious, observant, quiet.

 “Careful, we have to be care-ful.”

Everything was in place now. They had followed the Daramak’s guidelines to the letter: the power source, the restoration devices, and the monitoring systems…ready for the reef and its people to rebound together. She unconsciously dips her hand into the seeding units, stroking the familiar, rugged surfaces of the coral settlements. 

“We are ready,” Hina reassures herself

A faint glow on the horizon, rapidly brightening. Then suddenly, in a burst of light, the Daramak fleet appears, propelled by bioluminescent solar sails.

“This time, it will be different.”

Credits: 

The text of this story ‘Project Reefoir’ is the copyright of Ignacio Gianelli, Laura Pereira, Andrew Merrie, and Kim Yip Tong. The artwork and associated imagery are the copyright of Kim Yip Tong.