In disaster-prone Vanuatu, photos show sea animals returning to battered reefs. Can recovery happen?

OFF THE COAST OF EFATE ISLAND, Vanuatu (AP) — Beneath the turquoise waters of Vanuatu, amid a graveyard of broken coral, a moray eel peers from the branches of a staghorn colony. Nearby, the feathered arms of a yellow sea lily sway in the current and a turtle grazes on algae growing along the reef. These flickers of life hint at a slow but hopeful recovery.

For the past decade, the South Pacific island nation’s coral reefs have faced one punishing blow after another. Cyclone Pam in 2015 hit from a direction that left one reef particularly exposed.

“The way the waves came in actually smashed the coral,” said John Warmington, a longtime resident of Vanuatu who’s been diving the reef for more than 10 years. “I can remember our first dive after the cyclone and my friends and I were all in shock. Coral heads turned over, smashed staghorns — all laid bare.”

In the days that followed, heavy rains washed sediment into rivers that emptied into the sea, blanketing corals in a thick debris that blocked the sunlight they need to survive.

Other threats followed. Crown-of-thorns starfish — natural coral predators whose populations can surge after heavy rains wash nutrients into the sea — swept in to devour what remained. Though native to the region, they can multiply into outbreaks that decimate hard corals, especially vulnerable species like staghorns and plate corals. In 2023, two cyclones struck within days of each other, flattening swaths of reef that had just begun to regrow. And in December 2024, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake shook the seafloor.

“The whole reef slid down into the deep like an underwater landslide,” Warmington said. “We just saw heartbreak.”

Vanuatu, which is home to about 300,000 people spread across 83 islands, is among the countries most...