[Coral-List] CoralWatch Colour cards - easy data from E-Caribbean bleach

[Associate Professor Justin Marshall]

If anyone trying to keep track of current bleaching events in the E-
Caribbean would like a set of CoralWatch colour matching cards to do 
this (details to be found at
http://www.coralwatch.org/) please let us know - we can send out small 
numbers of these (ie 10-20) free. We can also provide help on 
different methods of chart use.

If you like the system, please encourage non-experts to have a go also 
(ie schools, local monitoring groups) we have calibrated likely error 
from such groups and it is small.

If you do gather data with the system, there is no obligation to let 
us have it, however we have a database at our website and we 
appreciate your time in entering data here if you can spare the time. 
It plots graphs for you and other stuff. The idea here is to build 
spatial and temporal pictures of bleaching and recovery on a global 
scale.

The key features of the system are:

Ease of use by non-experts and therefore the potential to build large 
teams doing this.

The 6-part scale of colour change allowing more info than just 
bleached and not bleached. For some corals this is directly correlated 
to symbiont count.

The ease of integration of this system into existing monitoring plans 
(ReefCheck and PADI - ProjectAware use it).

The use of the system in any number of ways to suit current methods - 
ie transects, random point walks/snorkells/dives or fixed point 
monitoring.

For further details see http://www.coralwatch.org/

Cheers - Justin
(Project leader - Coral Watch)