PhD candidate wins scholarship for research into black corals response to climate change
Amber Kirk is a PhD candidate in Marine Biology at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Her research into the impacts of climate change on temperate coral, specifically on the coral Antipathella fiordensis, recently won her the highly prestigious and competitive Our Seas Our Future Scholarship.
Our Seas Our Future (OSOF) is a Charitable Trust that works to protect and preserve Aotearoa New Zealand's marine and coastal ecosystems. Each year OSOF awards a scholarship to a New Zealand postgraduate student whose research is shaping the future and reflects the Trust’s values. OSOF acknowledged Amber's groundbreaking work this year, highlighting its current impact, and noting its potential to “guide future conservation strategies, ensuring the protection of fragile marine ecosystems like Fiordland in the face of global environmental shifts.”
Amber’s research looks at the potential resilience and adaptation of black coral to current and future climate conditions, with her focus being the species Antipathella fiordensis, found in Fiordland.There are more than sixty species of black coral found in New Zealand waters, and an estimated eight million live in Fiordland. These cold-water species play an important role in creating structure on the seafloor, growing up to five metres in height and width, and living for hundreds of years, with some estimated to have been alive pre-European arrival. As a vital element of Fiordland’s marine ecosystem and an under-researched coral species, the black coral Antipathella fiordensis is full of potential.
“In Fiordland the black coral form a really important biogenic habitat, so we’ve got lots of things that live on them and around them. If we started to lose them, we’d see a really drastic change to the ecosystem there.”
Amber will be testing the response of this cold-water coral species to changes in temperature by replicating marine heatwave conditions on juvenile corals. She’ll look at the impact of climate change on coral health, survival, and their microbial communities.
Amber will determine whether Antipathella fiordensis can adapt to changing conditions by simulating end of century climate projections.
“This is the first time we have held black coral at the Victoria University Coastal Ecology Lab for experiments. Because they’re protected under the Wildlife Act, any work on Antipathella fiordensis requires a permit by the Department of Conservation, so we’re stoked to be getting this research underway. Globally black corals are a highly understudied group, so it is all very exciting,” Amber says.
Amber’s work is funded by the George Mason Charitable Trust and Victoria University of Wellington. However, she says the Our Seas Our Future Scholarship will extend the capacity of her research, helping her to provide valuable insights into black coral species and uncover the climate resilience of black coral globally.