Abaco and Grand Bahama have just been devastated by the Atlantic hurricane with the strongest winds recorded at landfall.

The local fishermen have lived there since the 1700s and are used to surviving hurricanes every year, but they have never seen damage from wave surge like this.

As global sea level rise accelerates, as coral reefs die from global warming, and as hurricane intensity increases, this kind of damage will become many times worse.

Abaco and Grand Bahama are major bases for the Global Coral Reef Alliance, we have worked with local fishermen and divers on both islands for decades to help them identify the causes of damage to their corals, and we have built Biorock projects on both islands to regenerate their coral reefs and fisheries.

We just don’t know if our many friends in Abaco and Grand Bahama are alive.

It will take a long time to find out, but we know they have all lost their homes, their boats, their docks, everything they had, if not their very lives.

Whenever the Abaco and Grand Bahama survivors are able to regenerate their shattered marine ecosystems, GCRA will continue to work with them.

Quite apart from the protection they provide from storm surges, it is crucial to regenerate coastal ecosystems and shorelines everywhere, or there will be no Blue Economy in the future.

This video shows the results of a small Biorock project in the Abaco: