What a living reef at Palmyra Atoll taught me about connection, resilience, and our own wellbeing

At sixty feet below the surface, we drifted along the reef wall when the water in front of us suddenly thickened into silver.

A school of barracuda. Hundreds of them, suspended in near perfect formation. Long narrow bodies catching the light in synchronized pulses as they turned through the water. The school moved as one organism. No collisions. No panic. Just a quiet spiral of muscle and instinct.

They barely acknowledged our presence. For a moment we were simply another current passing through their world.

Barracuda school swimming together above a healthy coral reef system in the Indo-Pacific.

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Then my attention returned to something I had almost forgotten I was doing.

Breathing.

Slow and deliberate through the regulator. Inhale, pause, exhale. The quiet burble of bubbles rising toward the surface. At sixty feet below the Pacific, time slows. Your world narrows to the arc of your mask, the rise of bubbles, and the silent movement of life unfolding in three dimensions.

I began scuba diving in medical school, when it served as a counterbalance to anatomy labs and hospital wards. I have continued only a few times each year since. In January I completed a pool checkout in Florida to prepare for this trip, refreshing the small but essential rituals of diving.

Palmyra Atoll is a tiny, uninhabited coral atoll in the equatorial central Pacific, about 1,000 miles south of Hawai‘i. A ring of low islands and lagoon surrounded by vast open ocean, it sits within one of the most intact and biologically rich marine ecosystems on Earth. Since 2000 The Nature Conservancy has owned and helped steward part of the atoll, which has become a global research center for conservation and restoration.

A Living System Beneath the Surface

At Palmyra we completed five dives over four days. I was there with three other board members of The Nature Conservancy. Our guide on each dive was Eric Conklin, TNC’s Marine Science Director for Hawai‘i and Palmyra.

Underwater, titles disappear quickly. Eric became something more than a dive leader. He became an interpreter of the reef itself, quietly teaching us how to see the system unfolding around us.

Our first full deep dive came on the second morning at a site known as Mega Jack. The name proved correct.

One of the first things you notice underwater at Palmyra is the density of fish. Not scattered individuals, but moving architecture. Living formations reshaping themselves every few seconds.

As we descended along the reef slope, the water filled with big eyed jack circling in coordinated arcs. Their silver bodies flashed as the school pivoted together. Rainbow runners streaked through the outer edge of the formation like blue green arrows. Red snapper and black snapper hovered above coral outcroppings as if suspended on invisible threads. Milkfish gathered in drifting walls moving slowly across the reef face.

And then there were the sharks.

Gray reef sharks patrolled the outer edge of the reef with calm confidence. Blacktip sharks moved through the shallower water with quiet precision. They were not rushing through the reef as hunters. They moved through it like sentinels, part of the architecture of the ecosystem itself.

Later we descended again at a site known as Penguin’s Pit. The terrain felt different there, slightly deeper and more enclosed. Coral formations rose around us in elaborate structures that felt almost architectural.

Eric would pause beside a coral formation and motion us closer.

He taught by pointing.

Look at the grazing patterns of herbivorous fish.

Notice the spacing between coral colonies.

See the tiny new coral recruits settling onto the reef surface.

These small details, he explained later, are the signs scientists watch closely. They reveal whether a reef is merely surviving or truly functioning as a healthy ecosystem.

But the lesson that stayed with me most was not simply about fish density or predator abundance.

It was about connection.

The Circulation of an Ecosystem

Eric explained that the reef beneath us was connected to the rainforest ashore.

Seabirds nest in the native trees that cover the small islands of Palmyra. Over thousands of years their guano enriches the soil with nutrients, nourishing roots and native plants. Rain carries those nutrients through the island and into the lagoon and then outward across the living coral reef.

Those nutrients feed plankton, the base of the ocean food chain. Plankton feed small fish, and also manta rays. Those small fish sustain the jacks, snapper, and barracuda moving through the reef. Those fish sustain the sharks patrolling the outer edge of the ecosystem. Tuna drive bait fish back toward the surface. And in turn the seabirds, terns, frigatebirds, and boobies, feed on those surfacing fish.

Land feeds sea. Sea feeds land.

Recent conservation work at Palmyra focuses heavily on strengthening that connection. Restoration teams are removing invasive coconut palms and restoring native forests that support larger seabird populations. More seabirds mean more nutrients entering surrounding waters and greater resilience for the reef.

This circular dependency changes how you see everything.

As a physician I have spent decades studying the body’s circulation. Oxygen moving through blood vessels. Organ systems depending on one another to sustain life. Hovering underwater at Palmyra, I felt as if I were witnessing a form of planetary circulation. Nutrients moving from forest to coast, coast to reef, reef to the deep ocean. Energy passing from plankton to fish to sharks, then back to birds to complete the cycle.

The connections Eric was showing me pointed to something larger.

There is a delicate balance. A harmony.

Planetary health and human health are inseparable.

Why Ocean Health Matters to Human Health

The longer I stayed underwater at Palmyra, the harder it became to think of the ocean as something distant from everyday human life.

That is not abstract. The ocean is the great living realm of this planet. It represents about 99 percent of Earth’s living space by volume. It also does quiet work that most of us never see. It absorbs more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases and about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide humans emit, buffering life on Earth even as it bears the burden of that stress.

For many, that connection is easy to miss because the ocean can feel far away. The health of the ocean is not separate from our own wellbeing. It helps shape the conditions under which we live, eat, breathe, and remain safe. It influences climate stability, food security, storm protection, biodiversity, and the resilience of coastal communities. When the ocean is stressed, the consequences do not stay offshore.

Of course, the ocean has a way of reminding you who is in charge.

On the third afternoon the seas turned rough. The dive itself was remarkable, but returning to the boat became the real challenge. Swells lifted the boat five or six feet at a time and dropped it again as we waited in the water, hanging onto a tow rope for our turn to climb the ladder.

When my moment came, I grabbed the rails and tried to time my ascent with the rise of the swell. For a few seconds I was suspended between ocean and boat as the ladder surged beneath me.

Somewhere in that scramble a wave tore off my mask. Saltwater rushed into my eyes and the world became a blur of foam and metal rails.

Moments like that bring instant clarity of another kind. Your attention narrows. You breathe slowly. You focus on the next small action.

We lost the mask forever to the ocean and laughed about it later. But it was a reminder of humility, and of where the real power in our vast world lies.

Humility appeared in other ways too.

By the third dive my fins had crowded my toes badly enough to leave open blisters. Before the next descent I sat on the back of the boat carefully wrapping each toe with tape while Eric reviewed the conditions for the afternoon dive. It was a small ritual, but a memorable one. Even in a place of astonishing beauty, you are still operating inside an environment that demands respect and care.

Between dives we waited roughly forty-five minutes on the surface so the nitrogen absorbed in our tissues could gradually leave our bodies before the next dive.

Those quiet intervals became some of the most valuable moments of the trip. We watched the lagoon, replayed what we had seen beneath the surface, and listened as Eric explained more of the science unfolding below us.

Researchers working at Palmyra are developing new tools to monitor reef health with extraordinary precision. Drones survey reef systems from above while machine learning helps scientists analyze subtle changes in coral cover and recovery. Detailed digital maps and virtual reef models allow researchers to test restoration strategies without disturbing the ecosystem itself.

What scientists learn at Palmyra is shared across the Pacific and beyond. That work matters because coral reefs around the world are under extraordinary stress. The global bleaching event that began in 2023 has exposed roughly 84 percent of the world’s coral reefs to thermal stress.

Although reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor, they support roughly a quarter of all marine species. Reef fisheries help feed hundreds of millions of people, and coral reefs help protect coastlines from storm damage. They are part of the living infrastructure that supports human wellbeing.

Coral reefs are among the planet’s vital signs. Palmyra shows us what strong vital signs look like.

Protection Is a Choice

My years in Washington also shape how I see places like Palmyra. Healthy ecosystems do not exist by accident. They exist because people choose to protect them.

Palmyra’s nearshore waters were first protected in 2001, when President George Bush established the Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, safeguarding the atoll and surrounding waters out to 12 nautical miles. In 2009 broader marine protection followed when Palmyra was included within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, now called the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, extending protected waters around the atoll to 50 nautical miles.

Together these protections created a protected seascape of roughly 10,400 square miles around Palmyra. Because reef, lagoon, and open ocean are protected together, Palmyra functions as a living refuge where fish grow larger, predators remain abundant, and marine life can move, feed, and reproduce with far less human pressure than in most tropical seas.

Protection is not passive. It is a decision. A policy choice. A form of stewardship.

During our final dive I hovered quietly above the reef watching the slow movement of fish below me.

A school of jack drifted across the reef face. Snapper held their position above coral heads. A gray reef shark passed slowly along the outer edge before disappearing again into the blue.

Nothing felt rushed. Nothing felt random.

The longer we stayed underwater, the more the reef revealed itself as a system of relationships rather than a collection of species.

Forest. Seabirds. Nutrients. Coral. Fish. Sharks.

Each one connected to the next.

When we finally surfaced after the last dive, I sat on the boat pulling off my fins, the toes on my left foot still taped because of blisters, salt drying on my skin as the lagoon stretched quietly around us.

It is difficult to spend time inside a functioning ecosystem and not come away with a deeper sense of perspective.

When ecosystems remain connected and protected, life organizes itself in remarkable ways. Energy flows through the system. Predators return. Coral grows.

Land feeds sea. Sea feeds land. And humanity depends on both.

Breath by breath. System by system.

The reef below us was still moving, still feeding, still sustaining life in ways most of us rarely see.

I sat there for a long moment watching the lagoon.

Our own wellbeing remains deeply connected to that hidden world.

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Author’s Note:

As a physician, I have spent much of my career studying human health. Increasingly, I have come to believe that understanding, and protecting, the health of the planet is inseparable from protecting our own.