Finding Hope When Things Look Bleak

“It’s not just a passion, or a want, or a vocation: we need to do this work, or in a way, we’ve lost who we are.” 

Joseph E. Townsend MMES

Last May, my husband, our older son, and I visited our younger son, Joe Townsend, on St. Thomas. At the time, Joe was finishing up his master’s degree in Marine and Environmental Sciences. While we were there, he took time off from his studies and work to show us some of the beauty of the surrounding islands. Alongside the beauty, we heard tales from Joe of a curious coral disease in the area and the decline of healthy reefs around the world due to disease and warmer ocean temperatures. I asked him what it was like to do the work he did. His answer was sobering. “It’s pretty bleak,” he said.

When we saw each other again in December, we picked up from there. Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation that began in-person and concluded via e-mail. Credit for the photo above goes to Joe.

MITCHELL: Back in May, you said it was pretty bleak to be working in marine biology. Could you expand on that?

TOWNSEND: Yeah, the age of environmentalism has hit that multi-generational level. Not just the first generation or the second generation, I’m under the third generation of biologists. So from the beginning when I first learned what marine biology was, there’s been very significant decline, very significant losses. It’s just built into the job that you’re going to see really bad things happen. And because it’s happening so fast and the responses are happening so slowly, you know that, no matter what, you’re going to watch things you care about die.

MITCHELL: I heard you say the coral disease isn’t at St. John yet, but that you know it’s coming. 

TOWNSEND: It’s called Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease. While it might not originate from human aspects, we’ve reached a point in our society globally where, no matter what, humans exert some natural force on it. Humans are affecting or changing the way that we interact with these things. 

In this case, this disease was something that happened in Florida and then all of a sudden, about a year ago, it appeared in St. Thomas. And we largely attributed that to some form of human activity. Whether it be the shipping lanes or ballast water dumping. And then from there, the disease spread via contamination of humans moving from place to place. 

I was one of the first people to see it and since then I’ve been working to see where it is and where it’s not. You see these places that didn’t have the disease and you go back and just watch it be devastated. You have to observe and document that. We have to be on the front lines.  

There’s an upcoming meeting in St. John. I have to go over there and say, “So. I’ve seen the disease. We know it’s slowly moving this way. Here’s how you can prepare.”

MITCHELL: You’re adding to the body of knowledge about how to deal with it and how to treat it.

TOWNSEND: Yeah, and I guess in a way, you can kind of say that the way that globalization brought the disease allows the highway of knowledge too. 

MITCHELL: That’s hopeful. That’s a positive aspect. To that point, what does give you hope?

TOWNSEND: For me, what gives me hope is in the people that I find doing exactly what I am doing. When I talk to them, I find that they have the same outlook as me. It’s not just that I want to do what I can to help the environment, but that I feel like I have to. I just can’t, really, really can’t, do nothing about the environmental decline I see happening, even just within my lifetime.  

I’ve grown up in an era where my whole life there has been no question that the environment is changing, and in need of conservation. Generationally, that’s very different from the experience of a lot of people right now, and I think that inspires younger generations to turn science and conservation into a lifelong career. 

It’s difficult though because scientists are the observers—the ones who have to keep a lookout for the iceberg that may sink the Titanic. But if we throw up our hands and stop researching and understanding these problems, no one can do anything about something similar in the future.

We look at things like coral restoration, harmful sunscreen bans, and we see there is hope when you look for it. And those little things can be powerful enough to push you through all the bad. 

I brought this up when I was with some of my friends at a bar and the classic “What would you be willing to do for a million dollars” question came up. Then, we upped the ante to a billion dollars. 

After we confessed to all the surprising things that starving graduate students like us would be willing to do for that amount of money, I finally asked the question: “Would you accept a billion dollars if it meant you would have to completely forgo any work on the environment? And that means none of your money, your actions, or your legacy could ever be done in the interest of helping the environment.”

Everyone got quiet. And after a beat, they all unanimously agreed that was one of the very, very few scenarios under which they would not, they could not accept that billion dollars. None of us felt like we could give away the environment, or our contribution to saving it, for the temptation of being paid off beyond our wildest dreams. 

I think this story speaks to who you have to be to study marine biology, or any environmental study. It’s not just a passion, or a want, or a vocation: we need to do this work, or in a way, we’ve lost who are. Even accepting a billion dollars is meaningless if you leave that behind.