Although not actually pirates, we were ‘Sindbad voyagers’, on an expedition across the Indian Ocean to China aboard a replica ninth century stitched sailing ship.  For eight months, I was resident marine biologist.  Diving on Chetlat’s near-pristine reefs provided a glimpse of how marine life must have been, before heavy fishing, urbanisation and industrialisation got a stranglehold.  It felt we were in a time capsule; what was normal for our oceans before the era of systematic scientific records and satellite imagery.

Months later, in Singapore, crates packed with rich biological collections from Indian Ocean stopovers were dispatched to London’s Natural History Museum, where I later spent many months.   Collaborative research led to several publications, one describing a starfish species from Sri Lanka new to science.  Microscopic and molecular examination of biological specimens is how taxonomists enumerate different ‘ocean chess pieces’ – providing valuable clues about environmental health. 

For a schoolboy passionate about foreign languages, the likelihood of ever becoming a marine biologist seemed unlikely.  The U-turn, when it happened, was sudden and electrifying like a lightning strike – something that actually happened many years later becalmed for 55 days in the Indian Ocean.

After switching to zoology (as a pathway to marine biology), I developed a parallel fascination with medicine, following a class visit to the mortuary and witnessing post-mortems; curiosity intensified years later when learning to suture prior to long-distance sailing, in case of serious injury.  Health issues fuelled further interest.  Only decades after becoming a marine biologist, though, a new realisation dawned: that powerful crossovers may exist between medicine, marine science and conservation. Merging genres in this way provides an unusual take on oceans.  

A stethoscope or cardiac monitor are hardly what you’d expect the legendary oceanographer and conservationist, Dr Sylvia Earle, to carry on location. Yet the health kits of medics and marine scientists are not poles apart.  Just as CT and PET scans can rapidly diagnose human cancers, satellite scans display patterns of ocean fertility and temperature, or concrete patchworks where mangroves once stood.  We now know Type 2 diabetes is a likely outcome of being overweight or a diet over-packed with refined carbohydrates.  A nutrient overload in our coasts similarly creates unhealthy algal blooms, coral reef deterioration and a fevered marine environment.

Equally, X-ray scans have applications going beyond pinpointing bone fractures or diagnosing human cancers.  One illustration, and a novel approach we developed as a diagnostic tool in the aftermath of the 1990/91 Gulf War, involved ‘exhumation’ of coral heads from war-impacted zones of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.  Lead scientist was Professor James Readman, then at International Atomic Energy Agency/Marine Environmental Laboratories in Monaco.

If not actually dead, the coral reefs certainly had been exposed to huge and prolonged shocks: from pollution and cold winter temperature spikes (from smoke blanketing the sunlight).  Coral skeletons exhibit annual ‘growth rings’, as in the trunk of trees.  These were revealed through X-ray examination, not at a marine lab but a hospital – using its high-resolution mammography scanner.  This enabled sampling of contaminants in discrete time-horizons.  `Fresh oil’ contamination was markedly higher in the outer, most ’recent’ bands – the time interval equating to the massive oil andsmoke pollution events of 1991.

Our examinations of coral skeletons were eerily resonant with the ill-fated John Franklin Expedition, which set out in 1845 to find the North-West Passage. The two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror got stuck in Canadian Arctic ice and both crews perished.  While Franklin’s body was never found, the bodies of three other members were discovered under permafrost in the 1980s and exhumed.  Initial autopsies took place on site, while scientists undertook chemical isotope analysis of their skeletons in specialist laboratories.  They revealed elevated lead concentrations, perhaps from tinned food or the ship’s lead water pipes.  Some argued that this may have contributed to diminished mental faculties and general weakness.  More recent research considered scurvy, cold and starvation to have been more responsible. Either way, contamination of bones of John Franklin’s deceased crew by lead was clear-cut, just as it was in the skeletons of reef coral exposed to oil from Gulf War ‘collateral damage’.

Even in a high-tech, AI world, direct observation with minimal equipment is still a helpful means of taking the oceans’ pulse, just as it is for human health.  In the 1980s we developed a rapid diagnostic toolkit, initially for the Red Sea, to quantify and pinpoint areas of biological richness, as well as environmental pressures. Its real conservation value lies in highlighting management urgency, ‘automatically’ and intuitively.  It takes diagnosis a step beyond ecological and pollution assessment.  On a later project in Tunisia, we used the methodology as a simple traffic lights system – Red (alert), Amber (standby), Green (OK).  Human healthcare adopts a similar Triage system, for triggering warning when it comes to medicine classification and patient risk.

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We can frame many signs of oceanic distress through the lens of clinical examination. This helps us understand how symptoms can be read as vital signs of a vulnerable or ailing system.  By and large, scientists’ ability to diagnose ocean disorders has overtaken society’s keenness to put on the brakes of unfettered industrial and economic growth – a major driver of ocean injuries.  The tide could be turning, though.

The massive oil spill from the 1990/91 Gulf War conflict – the biggest ever – led to reparations on a gargantuan scale. Damage claims for environmental injuries alone led to compensation awards of $5.3 billion.  This reflects a growing realisation that environmental harm should not happen Scott-free.  Society had also seized upon the similar principle of compensation for human health, when it comes to problems from treatment errors or adverse side-effects.

Alongside compensation, marine biologists and conservation scientists have a cabinet of other healthcare remedies, to help keep our oceans healthy and rejuvenate weakened seas.  One approach involves artificial ecosystems.  Examples include corals grown in cages, nursery-grown mangroves and even seagrasses (natural and plastic), then transplanting them where needed.  But a coral in a cage is not the same as a reef in nature.  In our seas, just as in human medicine, injury prevention is better than cure.  Nevertheless, restoration does work. Replication and scaling up successes – perhaps to entire seas and oceans is difficult but doable.  Letting nature return, unassisted – through protected areas – is a simple, yet highly effective approach; it also adds resilience against future shocks and surprises.

For ambitious cures, we must first decide what is normal for oceans. A key step is going back in time to when brimming oceans, not depleted seas, were the norm and a signature of robust health.  In some ways deciding what is normal for our health is easier.  Through tens of thousands of years of evolution, our core body temperature has become fine-tuned to a narrow range of between 36.1 and 37.2 degrees centigrade – for at least eighty to ninety percent of the population.  For ocean health, though, there is no such blue-print: records don’t go back very far.  Except in rare and relatively pristine locations, such as the Chagos archipelago and the Lakshadweeps, as well as some remote Pacific atolls, the present is a poor guide to the past.  These and other super-protected areas are valuable proxies for the state of our seas before the advent of industrialised fishing and economic growth, whatever the cost. Otherwise we must rely on historical records of ocean health, even if imprecise.