2022 UNE Distinguished Alumni Award winner - Professor John (Charlie) Veron OAM
In recognition of his ground-breaking coral reef research revolutionalising the understanding of coral evolution and his leadership in the conservation of coral reefs against the effects of climate change.
Acclaimed marine scientist Professor ‘Charlie’ Veron (a nickname, after Charles Darwin, given to him by his teacher when he was just six years old) has spent a lifetime plumbing the depths of our oceans. Now it’s what we humans do on land that engages almost his every waking hour.
Not content to continue documenting the magnificent corals he has discovered during his stellar 60-year career or to highlight the threats they face, the 77-year-old “godfather of corals” (an epithet coined by Sir David Attenborough) is supporting what some have called a “crazy idea”. He’s singlehandedly collecting one of every coral species on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to help create a unique biobank.
As well as being an important repository of diversity, this “coral ark” in Cairns is designed to be an insurance policy against further coral bleaching associated with climate change.
“Some say it’s crazy, but it’s what we have to do to keep the corals alive”
“Some say it’s crazy, but it’s what we have to do to keep the corals alive,” says Charlie, who was one of the first scientists to recognise the link between heat stress and coral bleaching. “This approach is way out of the ordinary, but it’s well grounded in reality and absolutely essential. Each great big idea starts as a little idea that most people think is crazy.”
But then this maverick of Australian science and 2022 UNE Distinguished Alumni Award winner has always marched to the beat of his own drum.
The die was cast at UNE in the 1960s and 1970s, when a shy young man studying possums and lizards and dragonflies as part of a Bachelor of Science, followed by two higher degrees, was “reborn”. He enjoyed a time of “mind-blowing” discovery, scholarly independence and personal growth.
“I was such an underperformer at school,” recalls Charlie. But at UNE, on a Commonwealth scholarship, he had free rein to study what he liked. “I was like a kid in a lolly shop. UNE provided a foundation for growing and expanding, for thinking laterally to get to the truth of matters.”
It was also at UNE that Charlie founded a small scuba-diving club and discovered a passion that has seen him accrue 6,000 hours’ diving experience. The corals he and a colleague discovered, where none had been recorded before, formed the basis of a marine park proposal finally approved 30 years later.
Accepting a postdoctoral position at James Cook University to study corals opened up an entirely new career pathway. Charlie became the first full-time researcher on the Great Barrier Reef in 1972 – then an unexplored ecosystem – and, two years later, was the first scientist employed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the organisation that he would go on to lead for almost a decade.
Coral ecologist with Coral Reef Research, Lyndon DeVantier, says Charlie’s work in the 1970s required a metaphorical ‘deep dive’ into literature in various arcane languages and musty museum collections, dating to the 1700s. “It also required thousands of literal deep dives on reefs in all tropical oceans, from Australia to Arabia, and Africa to the Americas,” he says. “Charlie’s initial East Australian corals monograph series provided the taxonomic basis for the initial surge of research on the Great Barrier Reef and adjacent areas.”
Charlie taught himself everything there was to know about corals, starting “from scratch” with taxonomy, and he has since studied most of the world’s major reefs and named one-quarter of the known coral species. He also discovered the Coral Triangle and founded the Orpheus Island Marine Station.
Having produced 100 publications on everything from coral palaeontology and taxonomy to biogeography and physiology, including the three-volume Corals of the World bible, published in 2000, and the GBR tome A Reef in Time, Charlie is widely credited with transforming our understanding of coral reefs.
His primary aim has always been to make science accessible for conservation, and Lyndon says Corals of the World has proven a crucial tool for supporting scientific and protection initiatives.
“Charlie continues to guide research and awareness,” Lyndon says. “Rather than resting on his laurels, he remains active and committed to championing the cause of these remarkable species and ecosystems.”
Challenging orthodoxy and bureaucracy has seen Charlie court both steadfast allies and enemies. However, he is firm in his resolve, especially about the potential of the coral biobank, which contains 180 GBR corals and counting.
“We have already lost about 15 of the more common coral species on the GBR,” he says. “If we can keep corals alive in aquaria, then there will come a time when the gene jockeys in molecular biology can develop temperature-resistant corals. We’ll then be able to repopulate the reefs with genetically-modified corals. The alternative is that we leave corals to go extinct and that’s it; end of story.”
It's an outcome Charlie cannot countenance.
“Coral reefs are home to 50% of all marine life. If we wipe them out, you have an ecological collapse of the oceans and that will lead to an ecological collapse of everything. ”
“Coral reefs are home to 50% of all marine life. If we wipe them out, you have an ecological collapse of the oceans and that will lead to an ecological collapse of everything. Coral reefs lead the way because of their vulnerability to carbon dioxide, and therefore temperature. As a scientist who stitches things together, I saw this happening before others did and now we have the evidence to prove it.”
Charlie won the Darwin Medal in 2004 and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2021, in recognition of his lifelong services to marine research. His “crazy” efforts today to protect many of the corals he discovered are attracting national and global attention.
“The GBR’s problems are the most immediate indication of what we can expect as our climate changes,” Charlie says. “When the likes of the GBR go down, it’s not just losing some pretty corals that Australians have come to love, but losing the homes of a huge proportion of our marine species. We must do what we can to keep them safe.”
