Lola Wagner still remembers the excitement she felt the first time she snorkeled with her father in the Maldives at age 12 and spotted a whale shark. “I still think it’s one of the best moments of my life,” she says. “And I remember asking my dad how I could do something like that for a living.”

In landlocked Luxembourg, it wasn’t at first that obvious, but “as a joke” she added “marine biolgist” on her list of requests for careers she could follow for her high school’s job day. To her surprise, she was paired with Dr Pierre Gallego, a veterinarian specialising in marine mammals who also represents the government of Luxembourg as a scientific advisor and alternate commissioner for the . He’s also the vice-president of , the first association of its kind in Luxembourg. Established in 2013, its mission is to heighten awareness on marine life and conservation. Wagner now also serves as a communications officer to the group. 

In 2022, she earned her bachelor of marine science with distinction from James Cook University in Australia. “It was a bit of a full-circle moment,” she adds. “When I finished my bachelor degree, I came across another whale shark,” the only other time she has seen one, despite the research she is now doing on coral reefs off the shores of the Australian coast.

Studying coral as old as 6,000 years 

Lucky for Wagner, the covid-19 pandemic didn’t impact her studies too much. Although she was doing classes online, “we didn’t have a lockdown that lasted longer than three days. It helped going outside and having all that nature around.” 

She’s currently working on a nine-month research project--in part to determine whether she wants to do a longer-term project through a PhD--to learn more about the impact anthropogenic processes have on coral life, particularly around the Whitsunday coast. “We already know that coral bleaching events have been becoming more severe and frequent in the last years [due to] temperature changes and increased flooding which has been in the news all around Australia but also worldwide,” she explains. 

The freshwater and sediment that accompanies flooding limits the amount of light available for coral to photosynthesise, she adds. These factors, plus salinity changes, “have a big influence on their ability to cope.” 

She is currently studying fringing coral reefs--which differ from atolls or barrier reefs. Fringing coral develops along the coastline, therefore making it prone to different elements and processes, but it also can serve as a sort of nursery for juvenile marine species. Much of it is protected, with limited snorkeling allowed, for example. But because it’s exposed to more of those anthropogenic processes, it can help to see “how coral will respond in the future. It’s important to see the fringing coral that has already experienced a lot of stress and how that coral has adapted and will properly adapt in the future.” 

Despite their exposure, even to natural processes, “somehow they’ve managed to grow and thrive,” Wagner adds. It can take some reefs mere weeks post-bleaching to start reestablishing themselves.

“We are expecting a change in species, that more resilient species will survive, less resilient species will die. There’s a shift from branching corals to more robust [ones], like brain corals, that are less exposed to storms and waves.”

Her research has also included studying coral systems as old as 6,000 years: their age is another reason Wagner anticipates resilience. An underwater, hydraulic drill is used to take a small, cylindrical shape out of the coral, which is then studied through x-rays or UV lights to see banding. “If the luminescent banding is more intense, we know there was a big flooding event. If we have a bright line followed by a dull line and then again a bright line, we assume that is a year because the bright lines represent the wet season.”

Although she admits it’s “not a very exact measurement”, and that carbon dating helps get more precise data, “the distance between the different bands allows you to see how much a coral has grown within that year.”

Through the ancient coral, researchers can see how wetter or drier seasons over the longer term have impacted this marine life and how, for example, flooding events might have impacted it, and what that might mean for coral in future. 

Encouraging conservation efforts

During her studies at JCU, Wagner also worked in a turtle hospital, looking after green and hawksbill turtles.

“The university had rescued turtles that were exposed to a cyclone and would have died that night,” Wagner explains. “They took the baby turtles in, raised them at the uni in little tanks, and they had students volunteer to feed and clean them.”

One of the PhDs at the time was also doing some behavioural analyses on the turtles, and Wagner helped to study how they reacted to being in tanks, whether having trackers on them would impact their behaviour. After two years at the “hospital”, the turtles were released back into the wild. “They’ve been roaming around the Great Barrier Reef with their little trackers on their back  ever since!”

In future, Wagner would love to work more with cetaceans, although she admits the competition is tough as they’re among the most popular of marine animals. She eventually sees herself closer to the grand duchy, albeit on the coast--Croatia and Spain are a few options she has considered.

In the meantime, she and the other Odyssea team members present to students--for example, at high schools and museums and science fairs--to share their passion on marine life and conservation. They also want to educate others on the impact Luxembourg has on the ocean: “It’s very easy to have a sort of mentality--out of sight, out of mind--and think we [in Luxembourg] don’t have an impact on our oceans because we’re a landlocked country,” Wagner states. “But actually, we are one of the biggest fish consumers per capita in Europe. We own ships. And we have an effect also with carbon emissions.” 

In addition to that, Wagner says she “wants to get people interested in the ocean, the same that Pierre did for me… and there is a community in Luxembourg that supports you.”