Environment
Showcasing Palau's Marine Splendors
But International Coral Reef Center is Much More Than a Classy Aquarium
Palau’s International Coral Reef Center has an ambitious marine conservation and research agenda and an impressive facility from which to do it. Less than a year old, the $7 million facility has opened up a new stage in Palau’s development by giving the country an ability to monitor and understand the life cycles of the local marine environment. This is critical because these issues are frequently in debate in all marine-dependent island countries that are attempting to develop tourism, fisheries and other industries without destroying their marine environment.
Whether it can be successful depends in large part on the Coral Reef Center’s ability to attract funding and international scientists to conduct research beneficial to Palauans. The center is promoting itself worldwide and has recently gone on-line—www.picrc.org—to increase its visibility. “Money is the major problem,” said center researcher Lolita K. Penland, a Palauan. “The research side (of the facility) has to raise the money to pay for itself.”
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The Japanese government funded the construction of the facility, a combination public aquarium and private research facility. It is the first of its kind in the Micronesian area. Originally planned as an $18 million facility, realities of the Japanese economy in the late 1990s forced a reduction in the size of the Coral Reef Center. But it is still a facility that would draw acclaim anywhere in the world. As an indication of the enthusiasm the center stimulates, earlier this year Satoko Ishida, a medical doctor from Japan, visited Palau to attend a memorial service for a former supervisor. After visiting the center, she donated $4,000 for its activities.
Walking through the aquarium exhibits, visitors look out to Malakal Harbor, with some of the famous Rock Islands jutting up out of the water barely a stone’s throw from the Center. To say the center is “interactive” with its environment is a mild understatement. It’s located right in the marine environment it’s studying, so much so that at one point earlier in the year, a turtle in the facility up and walked out of its pool, headed off into Malakal Harbor and hasn’t been seen since.
The U.S. government is providing funding for some staff, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency has funded a post for a research professor. In the few short months that the center’s been open, it’s already attracted marine researchers from the U.S. and Japan who are conducting studies into mangrove clams, the hydrodynamics of the inner lagoons in the Rock Islands, and coralline algae, according to David Idip, another Palauan researcher on the staff. “We have had inquiries from a group from the University of Pennsylvania and from a private biotechnology company in Japan,” Idip said.
Two key elements of the center’s agenda: research that benefits Palauans by assisting island residents to make environmentally friendly development decisions and participation of Palauans in its activities.
“Our current activity is the implementation of a continuous nationwide coral reef monitoring program,” Idip said.
Other targeted research and marine activities include:
• Developing a national “marine protected area” program.
• Generating a marine habitat map for Palau.
• Assessing the effects of coastline fisheries on fish stocks.
The center is a tremendous resource for local students, thousands of whom visited the school in its first year of operation. The center is often visited by more than 400 students a week, and it’s also now on visitors’ “must see” list. From June-August this year, center staff sponsored a series of family events to provide the community with fun, awareness-raising summer activities. The programs involved young people in an “art week,” tours of marine lakes in the Rock Islands, and story telling and craft making.
Photo: Palau International Coral Reef Center
