Rachel (Coral Disease & Shipwrecked Faith)

Written by Rachel G. Jordan

Weightless in blue, I floated among sparking particulates toward the shipwreck. She was a modest vessel— just a few hundred years old— split top from bottom and strewn across the reefscape where time overgrew her skeleton with monstrous brain corals, towering star corals, and weedy thickets of purple sea fans. The wreck seemed to serve as a canvas for the glimmering color palette of corals. Light beamed onto them from where surface waves sloshed against the wreck’s vertical hull, casting shadows among bursts of colorful fish. For a time, my own shadow moved among them. 

I was the coral biologist of Dry Tortugas National Park— a boat-driving, SCUBA-diving, coral-loving Park ranger with a sunburnt nose. I am often asked how one arrives at such a profession. In my case, it was a clear calling since childhood in which my Christian faith played a major role. My relationship with God led me to depend on him to plot the course of my life; it was his direction and provision that led me seaward. And so it was that I spent the greater half of my 20s packing my Bible in a field duffle, praying under the stars, and witnessing marvels of creation firsthand. Instead of the typical forest green NPS uniform, I daily donned skintight neoprene. It was my job to care for the corals, come what may.

Something bad was coming. In the wake of a global pandemic, the “covid of corals” was making its way towards the Park’s reef. Only this disease was much worse. If a coral caught it, it died in a matter of weeks— sometimes days. Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (called SCTLD) was first discovered off the coast of Miami in 2017 before promptly sweeping along Florida’s reef within the next few years. It decimated corals, melting flesh from bone with rapid necrosis. As a coral biologist, the best way I can describe this suite of infecting microorganisms is “violent,” transforming vibrant reefs to patches of rubble. 

Even before SCTLD came to the Park, I knew it was coming. Statistical models had predicted its arrival in early spring, and it was with a flurry of reconnaissance dives and intervention preparation that me and my team of SCUBA divers waited. Our plan was to treat individual sick corals with an antibiotic paste that previous research promised would stave off some of SCTLD’s killing spree. As we waited for the disease, our atmosphere was restless, urgent, and filled with a strange phenomenon: anticipatory grief. 

Anticipatory grief isn’t much different from actual grief; it just has a peculiar bit of flavor added. Anyone who has ever sat at the bedside of someone during their last days has tasted it. Anyone who has ever looked at someone they dearly love and thought to themselves for an instant, “To lose them would wreck me,” knows its particular pang of bitterness. Love is wrapped up in grief, which is probably why its pain has the power to change our hearts so suddenly, acutely, and irrevocably. 

The emotional side of conservation careers isn’t much talked about, but it ought to be. My job title may have been “coral biologist,” but it would be better described as “hospice care for corals.” Scientists have real and raw emotions. And I would argue that there are few who love the world so well. No heart aches bolder than that of a conservationist seeing creation harmed. No mind screams anguish louder than that of a coral biologist forced to watch the reefs she loves suffer. 

Despite the best efforts of us determined marine biologists, SCTLD got the best of the reef. The coral-covered shipwreck was stripped of its color. With the loss of corals, fish faded from view, off to seek new homes elsewhere. The wreck’s hull, where color and motion and life congregated to dance in beams of sunlight, lays vacant— its surface now studded with sprawling skeletons of the animals I knew and loved. 

What are you to do with such grief? Surely, I am not the only conservationist who has wondered. But it’s easy to feel like a metaphorical island when the physical island you stand on has lost the majority of its corals. There’s no boat that can take you far enough out to sea to get away from the pain you feel. But there is something else.

There can be community. Looking over at my dive buddy, I could see him fighting back tears behind his mask. Our hearts hurt the same. After an especially tragic dive, it was a balm to be silent together on the boat. We didn’t need to talk; we just needed quiet company. As SCTLD ravaged the reef outside our doorsteps, we marine biologists gathered together after work for potlucks. No casserole or spring salad or tray of brownies was going to magically fix what was happening, but good food, good conversation, and good friends helped us survive when the corals did not. 

Similarly, there can be things we still enjoy. Every night, I walked alone in the dark under a blanket of stars. For hours, I’d meander through wild tangles of scrubby beach brush, wading ankle-deep in gently lapping waves. Blue flickers of bioluminescence punctuated the watery dark, like miniature lightning bolts of hope. Before bed, I’d listen to my favorite music and read wonderful books. These were all ways of remembering the good, keeping my days on the job from feeling wholly bad. 

I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone than I did during the season that SCTLD came to the Park. But as my beloved corals perished in the disease’s vice-grip, I came to realize that the only true solution— to both the problem of suffering in the world and the pain in my own self— is God. 

Faith and science collide along the chasm of conservation issues. What scientists and theologians alike address as “the problem of pain,” the question of “why suffering exists,” and how personal philosophy informs our answers to such things make for a conundrum unlikely to be adequately addressed in a single, brief blog such as this. But if God made all things and loves all he made (basically, if God is who he says he is in the Bible), then he loves the corals too. In fact, he loves them better than I do. And this means that if my heart is breaking for the loss of coral reefs, God’s heart breaks all the more. 

He is alongside us as we labor in the world he made. He will not leave us alone in grief, even when people do. Our love for creation is a shadow of his own, and so the loss of creation does not need to shipwreck our faith. 

If you’re interested in continuing this conversation about faith and science or curious to hear more about my work with the NPS, I’d love to get in touch. I regularly post cool nature stories, faith and science discussions, and theology and ecology resources to my Instagram @shorelinesoul. You can also find me at https://rachelgjordan.com/.