CRIOBE

With its sophisticated laboratories, extensive library, comprehensive collections room, dive center, kitchen, and dorms, CRIOBE’s field station has stood at the forefront of coral reef research for four decades, attracting students from France (of which French Polynesia is a part) and researchers from around the world.

One reason Moorea is a hotbed of research is that the reefs here were relatively undisturbed until the 1980s. Then came a series of disasters, some natural and some man-made. A plague of reef-eating starfish invaded in 1980 and ’81; hurricanes and cyclones struck the island for the first time since 1906 in 1982, and then again in 1991; and the human population of the island increased threefold between 1971 and 1996. These changes made Moorea’s previously pristine reefs an even more valuable living laboratory, allowing researchers to study how reefs respond to such threats—events that endanger coral reefs worldwide as human numbers swell and change the earth’s climate.

CRIOBE grew from France’s earliest studies of coral reef ecosystems, back in the 1960s. As a joint project of France’s National Museum of Natural History and its High School for Practical Studies, CRIOBE archives the data on coral reefs stretching back in time longer than any other institution in the entire Pacific Ocean. An earlier field station was located along Cook’s Bay in 1971; CRIOBE’s current campus was built on Opunohu Bay in 1981.

At CRIOBE, graduate students study the nesting success of endangered sea turtles, count and classify creatures as diverse as fire corals and sea cucumbers, and compare the results of surveys with the first studies done on Moorea in 1971. Researchers dispatched from CRIOBE study the sea life of other French Polynesian islands as well—and even discover new species. A pufferfish new to science was described by an American-French collaboration in 2012. The new species was named Canthigaster criobe in the institution’s honor.

 

The CRIOBE campus.

 

 

Vanessa Conrad, a student, studies giant clams.

 

Franck Lerouvreur, dive operator.

 

Pauline Bosserelle, left, and Claire Bonneville conduct water surveys as part of their research at CRIOBE.

 

Caroline Dube, working topside, explores the genetics of fire coral in the lab.

 

Alexandre Merciere uses the microscope to study coral growth.

 

Research student Marc Besson labels fire coral samples.