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【阅读理解】Reading: Coral Nursery Chronicles
Mira inserted the tube into the coral frame and waited.
Beside her, Dr. Ansel, marine architect and self-appointed guardian of this submerged nursery, tapped his slate twice; the survey showed a 12 percent drop in live tissue since March.
"We used to count in square metres," he said, his voice garbled by the regulator.
"Now we count fragments."
It was 2019, and the reef off Pulau Sari had already lost half its coral cover to warming water, runoff, and a notorious bleaching event two summers earlier.
Mira, a 27-year-old dive instructor turned conservation apprentice, had come to learn how a nursery works.
She had no idea she would stay for six years.
The nursery began as a modest venture: 40 frames, a charter boat, and a grant of 18,000 dollars from a Singapore foundation.
Ansel's premise was simple.
Coral fragments, when suspended in clean water with steady current, grow faster than on a degraded reef; once they reach a viable size, divers cement them onto barren rock.
The method demanded patience, not glamor.
For eight months, Mira's assignment was tedious: scrub algae, replace zip ties, record temperature and salinity on waterproof leaflets.
"You'll hate it by week three," Ansel warned.
He was right.
She also learned to inculcate a habit of checking the coral's colour before her own buoyancy; a single careless knee could squash a year's growth.
The work was, she admitted, a strange kind of healing.
Then the water turned.
In 2021, a marine heatwave pushed temperatures past 31 degrees centigrade for eleven consecutive days.
The nursery's protective shade cloth, torn by a storm the previous month, lay in a tangle on the sand.
Mira and Ansel watched as the coral's vibrant pink dulled to a sickly cream.
The damage was erratic, not uniform: some genotypes died within hours, others held on.
Ansel's team, now a cooperative of nine volunteers, lost 62 percent of their stock.
"I can avenge this," Mira said, half-joking, after a crushing dive.
Ansel did not laugh.
"You can't avenge a system," he replied.
"You can only modify your approach."
The loss forced a reckoning.
The old model — outplant, monitor, wait — had a hidden discrepancy: it assumed a stable ocean.
It would not survive the next decade.
Mira returned to the mainland and enrolled in a two-year course on coral genetics.
The terminology was dense, the statistics unforgiving.
She learned to evaluate larval settlement rates, to pinpoint the genes that confer heat tolerance, and to understand why generic restoration often fails.
Her thesis project, a collaborative effort with a university lab, aimed to breed a hybrid capable of withstanding 32 degrees.
Colleagues were skeptical; some called selective breeding a distraction.
"It's a gamble," she told a conference in 2023.
"But doing nothing is a bigger one."
The data, while preliminary, was impressive: the hybrid larvae survived at rates three times higher than wild spawn under heat stress.
Ansel, who had become her mentor and occasional critic, called the results "a credible line of evidence, not a miracle."
By 2024, the nursery had moved.
The new site lay adjacent to a deeper channel, where upwelling brought cooler water and fewer hazards.
The team, now 22 strong, had become a workforce of divers, boat captains, and data analysts.
Mira, appointed managerial lead, discovered that regeneration is as much about people as polyps.
She had to hire, train, and occasionally fire; she had to balance grants, shipments of cement and zip ties, and the constant awareness that every dollar spent on a boat engine was a dollar not spent on larvae.
The reef responded slowly.
In November, a survey recorded the first sign of natural spawning on a restored patch — three colonies, each the size of a dinner plate.
Ansel sent her a one-line message: "We have proof."
Mira cried in the office, then went back to the spreadsheet.
Not everything recovered.
The barrier reef's southern edge, once a spectrum of colour, remains largely barren; local fishers report smaller catches and an odour of decay in certain coves.
Tourism has diminished; the dive shop Mira once worked for closed in 2022.
She still dives there sometimes, alone, and finds herself cataloguing absences: no turtles, few groupers, an unnerving quiet.
The ocean is not a patient recipient of our apologies.
It responds to what we actually do, not what we intend.
One afternoon, hovering over a frame she planted in 2019, Mira noticed a tiny fish — a damselfish, maybe two centimetres
Questions
1. What was the original size of the coral nursery when it started?
A. 40 frames and a grant of 18,000 dollars B. 9 volunteers and a cooperative C. 22 team members and a charter boat D. 3 colonies and a dinner plate
2. What happened to the coral during the 2021 marine heatwave?
A. All genotypes died within hours B. The coral grew faster due to warmer water C. The nursery lost 62 percent of its stock D. The team moved to a deeper channel
3. What does the word "inculcate" in the passage most likely mean?
A. To forget gradually B. To teach by repetition C. To measure accurately D. To criticize harshly
4. Why did Mira enroll in a course on coral genetics?
A. To write a thesis about tourism decline B. To become a dive instructor again C. To find a way to restore coral more effectively D. To prove Ansel wrong about selective breeding
5. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. Tourism and fishing are more important than coral restoration B. Selective breeding is a miracle solution for coral reefs C. Coral restoration requires adapting methods and people to a changing ocean D. Marine heatwaves are the only cause of coral loss in Pulau Sari