We are fortunate to have been able to work with the I-Kiribati on Kiritimati (pronounced ‘Christmas’), in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean for over a decade. Kiritimati is the home of our major field program, and we are deeply committed to the atoll and its people. Between 2009 and 2023 we conducted 16 research expeditions to Kiritimati (3 year hiatus due to COVID-19 travel restrictions).

The world's largest atoll, Kiritimati, has a strong gradient of local disturbances, from its heavily impacted northwest coast where the population is concentrated, to the remote uninhabited end of the atoll, which has some of the world’s healthiest reefs. Our research includes a coupled ecological-socioeconomic monitoring program, that was started by collaborator Sheila Reddy in 2007, and includes 40 monitoring sites around the atoll’s forereefs. During the 2015-2016 El Niño, Kiritimati experienced globally unprecedented heat stress, and suffered mass coral mortality. The atoll is thus an ideal location to study how global climate change and local human disturbances interact to change coral reefs, and to understand what factors will enable reefs to resist and recover from these stressors.

To answer these questions, we study many components of the coral reef ecosystem, from the corals and their associated microbial communities, to the overall benthic community structure and complexity, and the reef fishes and urchins. We work in collaboration with Kiribati’s Ministry of Fisheries and Ministry of Environment, Lands, and Agriculture Development, and with the Cobb Lab, who have also worked long-term on the atoll. We also work with other researchers, including Ross Cunning, Andrew Baker, Becky Vega-Thurber, and John Burns, on the broad array of data we collect on Kiritimati. We encourage you to get in touch if you are interested in collaborating with us.

Key Publications: Baum et al 2023 Science Advances Maucieri & Baum 2021 Biological Conservation Claar et al. 2020 Nature Communications; Magel et al. 2020; Claar et al. 2020 Molecular Ecology; Robinson & Baum 2016

Photo: Kiritimati Atoll from space, Google Earth

Since the fall of 2020 we have worked in collaboration with Kelp Rescue and Bamfield Marine Science Centre, examining long-term changes and the impacts of marine heatwaves on kelp communities. This research builds from former Baum Lab post-doc Sam Starko’s kelp expertise and long-term work at BMSC.

Photo: Bamfield Marine Science Centre