The Chagos Archipelago is one of the most remote places on Earth. Smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the collection of more than five dozen tiny islands are mostly uninhabited, due in no small part to the United States and United Kingdom expelling the Indigenous Chagossians in an ethnic cleansing from 1967 to 1973. For decades only a single atoll, Diego Garcia, has had any inhabitants. Yet as coral reef ecologist Alexandra Dempsey explored the atolls’ beautiful coral reefs in 2015, she nevertheless found signs of human pollution.
“While we were there, we witnessed the very first stages of a bleaching event,” Dempsey said, referring to when coral becomes dead and white due to stress. Dempsey recalled "the scale at which these 100-year-old corals were just stressed. They were paling. The cotton candy colors paling is definitely an indicator of an ecosystem that is extremely stressed.”
