BY NIK FARAH HANEEM NIK MOHD AZHANI
WITH the ever-increasing impact of climate change, people are aware but tend to overlook the extend of threats inflicted on a certain life form housed by the ocean – especially our coral reefs.
Commonly known as a sensitive ecosystem, the charismatic and colourful coral reefs are easily affected by changes in their surroundings such as light intensity and nutrient availability, with thermal stress being its greatest foe.
Dr Wee Hin Boo, a Research Fellow on marine science at Institute of Climate Change, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) recently told The Petri Dish that Malaysia is a part of the coalition of the Coral Triangle which has one of the highest marine biodiversity in the world.
Wee said: “Coral reefs, even though they only comprise two percent of the total area of the sea floor, they house around a quarter of all the marine diversity. Furthermore, 50-70% of the diversity of coral reefs resides within the Coral Triangle region.”
Nevertheless, as diverse as they are, coral reefs required a stable environment to thrive. With the increase of sea surface temperature due to climate change, reef-building hard corals, the building blocks of coral reefs, will be in constant stress or die en masse. This will cause the collapse of the invaluable coral reef ecosystem.
He said: “With the high biological diversity, it is with no surprise coral reefs contributes a lot in our food security, especially for the coastal populations. Most of our important protein sources such as fish, prawns, and crabs have part, or all their life stages revolve around coral reefs. Thus, the collapse of coral reef ecosystem will affect our dinner plate.”
As the lead technical expert in the MyIKLIM Database, Wee is a self-taught programmer with his expertise varying from R, Phyton, and Julia programming languages.
“Each programming language has its own strengths and weaknesses. It’s just like the concept of polyglot. Some words cannot be directly translated in certain languages but can be perfectly expressed in others.”
“So, by using these three languages, I hope to transcend the boundary and use the data to its’ maximum potential.”
In his recent research publication on the relationship between climate change and the marine environment, he actively assisted by organising, disseminating, and most importantly interpreting a decade’s worth of data collected from the seas of Southeast Asia.
Additionally, Wee also highlighted the close correlation between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and concentration with the marine environment.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses a standard to predict the trajectory for concentration of GHG by 2100, known as Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP). With RCP 1.9 (best case) represent the pathway if we follow the aspiration of Paris Agreement, while RCP 8.5 (worst case) scenario with rising rate of GHG concentration increase. However, there are few more categories in between the aforementioned scenarios” he explained.
With the concern that we might be falling behind the ideal GHG emission control targets, Wee and his fellow researchers are actively advocating to increase awareness of the impact of climate change on the coral reefs.
“Malaysia is a very lucky country where we are blessed with a lot of diversity, both on the terrestrial and the ocean front. Nevertheless, climate change is just like an iceberg – it’s slow, it’s big, and it’s coming towards us, but we tend to take it for granted. When it’s too near, then it’s too late.”
He hopes all Malaysians will take some time to understand our nation’s diversity and help in every way they can in conserving them.
