A Healthy reef purrs, croaks, growls / Terve riutta kehrää, kurnuttaa ja murisee

Beneath the surface I saw fish, turtles, starfish and other wondrous marine life. Completely new, an unknown world opened before me as the earthly sounds disappeared and I sank to the shades of turquoise, listening only to my own breath.

However, the infatuation only lasted for a while, because I quickly realised that everything was not quite appropriate. In a broader perspective, the sea and the reef didn’t even look the same as I had seen as a child on TV in Jacques Cousteau’s amazing nature documentaries.

A healthy coral reef makes sounds, it drains and burbles. Instead of the sounds of living corals, I listened to the crunch and rattle of dead coral washed ashore. This seabed was partly dead and trying to recover from the devastation caused by the recent typhoon.

Corals turn white when the water temperature is above the average temperature for a long time. Some of the corals die as a result of fading. According to scientists, more than 90% of corals are in danger of disappearing by 2050. The warming of the Mediterranean is rapidly changing the marine ecosystem. According to a new report by the World Wildlife Fund, WWF, a thousand alien species have already become extinct to the warming waters of the Mediterranean and displaced native species. In the Mediterranean, fish swim from Africa to the southern shores. Changes in fish species, for example, have already changed fish catches. For fishermen, completely newspecies are now caught in their nets and fishing gear. (yle.fi 2021)

My own experience in the sea and the information I read make me think about how corals survive. I imagine that they will only go further north, to escape from the rising temperatures to sea water in the south.

Eventually, they might appear in the Nordic seas and form new colourful ones here, coral reefs that we can admire in the future.

SWEET WATER, ROUGH WATER

Media art exhibition 6.7 – 30.7. 2023

HAA Gallery, Suomenlinna

Artsts: Emma Fält & Roberto Fusco, Tuula Hara, Jani Heikkinen, Katarina Karppinen, Heidi Kirjavainen, Ulla-Mari

Lindström, Susanna Lyly, Tuukka Pasanen and Johanna Väisänen