Katia Nicolet has been studying marine biology at Townsville University in Australia for the past two years. She dives almost daily on the Great Barrier Reef, the subject of her research and future doctoral thesis.
While Europe is preparing to hibernate through the winter, tropical north-eastern Australia is already warming up under a hot spring sun. Katia Nicolet, 27, picks me up from the airport and takes me to the city centre, passing Castle Hill, the 300-metre-high red granite mass that dominates the skyline.
Sitting outside a downtown café, Katia gives me an impromptu lesson on coral formation, using any old piece of paper at hand. In barely 30 years, she points out, half of the Great Barrier Reef coral has vanished, most of it because of climate change.
After a quick walk along the bay opposite Magnetic Island, the island just off the port that is essentially a national park, Katia and I make our way to James Cook University. This is where she is carrying out her research and hopes to complete her PhD in 2016.
Tropical appeal
Katia was born to a half-English father and a Portuguese mother and grew up in Geneva before studying biology at the University of Neuchâtel. After completing her degree, she spent a month and a half as a research assistant on cleaner fish in Egypt. Enough to convince her to pursue a PhD in marine biology.
With three options on the table, Canada, France or Australia, Katia decided to travel far to somewhere warm.
She arrived in Townsville in February 2011, just after cyclone Yasi swept through. «There was such a huge difference between cold Switzerland and the tropics here with the flooding, rivers spilling out over the road and the uprooted trees,» she says.
«There was no electricity for a week, and at the time I didn’t speak English that well. So at that time, opening a bank account for example, was not easy.» Luckily, her new friends helped her out.
Coral disease
When we get to the university, Katia shows me the campus dotted with eucalyptus trees where 12,000 people study. She shares an office with an Italian doctoral student.
Her studies mean she is often away from her desk. She spent March to June this year on Lizard Island, part resort and part national park off the coast of Queensland, around 500 kilometres north of Townsville.
On those days, she began working at 6.30am, with an hour’s preparation before even leaving the overnight anchorage.
«When you dive for research, you carry around a huge amount of material,» explains Katia.
«A hammer to collect coral samples, a camera or rulers to measure the speed of progress of coral disease. At eight o clock, you’re on the boat. It took 30 minutes to get to the site, where we collected data and took photos during dives of between one to two hours. From time to time, I would also take water samples, and it would take two hours to analyse them back in the laboratory on the island.»
It was through this work that Katia discovered that so-called coral disease was being spread by the Drupella sea snail.
Under threat
Since beginning her work in this area, she has become a passionate defender of the Great Barrier Reef.
«It’s a unique and highly productive ecosystem, with an incredible biodiversity,» she explains enthusiastically. «You could compare it to the Amazon rainforest.»
The fragility of the reef intrigues her – and it seems to have many enemies, slowly killing this natural wonder.
Katia has been trying to understand how coral disease is transmitted, but it’s far from easy.
«I’ve set three or four experiments up, that I’m going to leave in situ for two years. I’m going to come back periodically to collect data. I’m also running two other experiments where I’ve placed a cage around the coral, to see what happens when there are no fish to eat off the coral. And other factors, such as water quality, light or the temperature can also influence disease development.»
Coral can survive in water up to 31 degrees Celsius. But above that there is a risk of bleaching. High temperatures are also a threat to the algae that live in symbiosis with the coral and provide it with up to 80% of its energy.
Any loss is a death sentence for coral. Global warming also means more carbon dioxide is released into the water, leading to acidification. This makes coral more fragile, not unlike bones suffering from osteoporosis. A warming climate powers more violent cyclones too, which damage the already fragile coral.
Add to that pollution from heavy metals and insecticides as well as fertiliser feeding the bacteria which make the coral ill. All of this threatens a reef which is 2,600 kilometres long and a preferred spawning area for fish.
Despite the multitude of threats to the Great Barrier Reef, Katia remains optimistic, and hopes that scientific knowledge will progress in step with the development of renewable energy, providing some solutions to the problems faced by the reef.
Katia has another three years to finish her PhD. «If all goes well, I will put together in my final year a model for predicting coral disease,» she hopes. «I don’t know if I will be able to stay in Australia after that, or if I will embark on post-doctorate research. What I do know is that I want to continue my research, to keep on trying to understand how to protect the coral reef in Australia or elsewhere.»