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WILLEMSTAD, Curaçao — I apologize for the prolonged blog silence (I have withdrawal symptoms!), but this week has been devoted to filming, not writing. Since my move to Pace University five years ago, I’ve been working each spring with a colleague, Prof. Maria Luskay, to focus a long-running documentary production course on environmental stories.

This year’s film, “Curaçao’s Coral Challenge – Reviving the Rain Forests of the Sea,” will be the third to explore humanity’s evolving relationship with the oceans (along with our sea turtle and shrimp farming films).

As with all of our previous films, this one (coming in mid May) will center on a society seeking to enhance its economy without diminishing its environmental patrimony. In Curaçao’s case, the challenge is finding ways to move beyond an economy based for nearly 100 years on refining Venezuelan oil to a more diverse one including substantial tourism — but doing so without degrading the still-vibrant reefs ringing parts of its coast.

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Many reefs across the Caribbean,* right up to the Florida Keys, have been devastated since the 1970s by a series of assaults from introduced diseases of Acropora coral (elkhorn and staghorn) and sea urchins (which help keep algae at bay), compounded by flows of pollution and overfishing accompanying rapid development.* Climate change poses a growing threat, with dropping ocean pH adding another stress. (And then there are introduced lionfish, which — happily — we saw turned into sashimi.)

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But, as I reported last year, there’s plenty that can be done to limit losses and, in some cases, boost prospects that Caribbean reefs will be around for a very long time to come. And Curaçao is a rare exception, with extraordinary reefs on its east end (Oostpunt) and north shore.*

Last month, Curaçao, along with Montserrat, signed an agreement with the Waitt Institute, a group devoted to “using the ocean without using it up,” to develop a marine management plan that is both politically viable and environmentally sound. This is no easy task, in large part because limiting impacts on reefs is as much about managing activities on land, the main source of pollution, as it is about managing activities on the water.

The institute is led by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a young marine biologist with Caribbean roots and a passion for policy. She’ll be featured in our film, along with Glenn Sulvaran, a member of parliament with a passion for reef conservation, and Faisal Dilrosun, a government health and environment advisor.

The first such “Blue Halo” initiative was launched in Barbuda in 2012 and recently produced pioneering ocean zoning legislation there.

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The film will also describe a coral propagation effort pursued by the Secore Foundation, Carmabi Foundation and Curaçao Sea Aquarium — in particular the work of Valérie F. Chamberland, a biologist who has spent nearly five years cultivating extremely endangered elkhorn coral in tanks and cementing them on boulders just offshore. The oldest batch, “planted” two and a half years ago, is poised, if all goes well, to produce its own spawn in August, Chamberland told us.

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You can learn more about ways scientists have found to encourage coral spawning from Kristen Marhaver, a biologist based at the Carmabi research institute here but who was away at this year’s TED conference while we were filming. Her TED slides are here and NPR just covered her work on the sex life of endangered pillar corals.

We arrived in Curaçao last Saturday and leave tomorrow with hard drives jammed with gigabytes of interviews and images of tropical fish and untreated sewage, pristine and overbuilt coastlines, coral nurseries and oil rigs, divers and fishermen (some of whom question the need for no-fishing zones) and much more.

You can read daily posts from Jhennifer Moises Dos Santos on the film project on the students’ blog, “Lights, Cameras, Coral.” And don’t miss Cassie Pacenka‘s daily “vlog” (video blog)!

Today’s video has a fun moment when Ayana Johnson meets a parrotfish during our interview:

We will distill all of this down to a tight 20 minutes, hopefully adhering to Randy Olson’s “and, but, therefore” story-structure mantra (you’re telling a story any time you replace an “and” with a “but” or “therefore”).

We’ll describe many challenges facing those seeking to sustain the environment in the face of development pressures, but my sense is that we’ll end on an optimistic note given the energy and determination of the people we’ve met, including Ryan De Jongh, who not only leads kayak tours but has spent years, on his own time, planting and propagating mangrove seedlings along shores denuded in the past.

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Postscript, 12:01 a.m., March 21 | * I’ve adjusted language at the asterisks to better reflect the condition of reefs in various parts of the Caribbean.