[Coral-List] Help Us Understand the Beauty of Coral Reefs

[International Coral Reef Observatory]

Environmental economics also aims to measure in monetary values (WTP
Willingness To Pay), the non material contribution of nature to people.
Taking into account socio-cultural dimensions are relevant to improve coral
reef conservation effectiveness.  Interesting would be to evaluate the
changes in human perception about the coral reefs beauty in relation to the
actual changes of coral reefs health. Otherwise, applies a common saying
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," which means beauty doesn't exist on
its own but is created by observers. That famous quote reminds us of the
subjectivity of a beholder who sees or experiences, becoming aware of the
quality and quantities usually observed in healthy coral reefs in
comparison to sites where there's a process of degradation going on. To be
a beholder, it is necessary to pay attention without biases to have a solid
criteria to identify indicators of health (Color biodiverse lived beauty),
algorithms can then be useful to consider value judgements of what is
accepted as a healthy coral reef.

However, asking young or new divers if they like what they see will
misinterpret what is an aesthetic "healthy coral reef", if they do not know
any resilient coral reef. Some love to see algae covering dead coral
colonies, or watch with admiration large lionfish surrounding sick coral
colonies, some get enthusiastic to help breaking coral colonies thinking
that is the only way to save coral reefs, while kicking with their fins
other coral colonies, some touch sick coral colonies and then touch other
healthy coral colonies...

Analyzing photos and videos is a tool to evaluate aesthetics values. Of
course in social sciences, we also interview divers about their observation
of changes. Some diving operators will try to deny the degradation of coral
reefs to avoid scaring potential tourists to come to a place where they do
their business. However, analyzing their film material, and other divers
videos and photos and considering the recent human activities in the area,
we can verify if their reports are credible or only serve to start a direct
conversation to improve their reporting skills before they become part of
our citizen science program.

All the best,
Nohora Galvis
ICRS World Reef Award Winner
ICRO Transdisciplinary Researcher
International Coral Reef Observatory
Follow us on Facebook.com/ICRObservatory
and ICR_Observatory on Twitter / Instagram / YouTube

El mié, 24 may 2023 a las 8:22, MOUQUET Nicolas via Coral-List (<
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>) escribió:

> Hi Peter, thanks for your answer. Evaluating the human perception of
> sescape is of strong interest in our willing to measure the non material
> contribution of nature to people. Aesthetic is among the most direct
> perception we have but one of the most difficult to measure. It requires
> using questionnaires such as the one I sent you but is always limited as it
> take time to evaluate few images. By using this online survey and then
> building a deep learning model to predict human aesthetic perception, we
> will be able to compute aesthetic for thousands of images collected in the
> field (look at what we did for coral fishes here as an exemple of our
> research :
> http://nicolasmouquet.free.fr/pdf/Langlois_et_al_2022_Plos_Biology.htm)
>
> And you are right it will then be a matter of combining this measure of
> human perception with ecological attributes of the coral communities to
> understand the level of decoupling between aesthetic perception and
> ecological functioning (we did it with coralligenous communities already
> here :
> http://nicolasmouquet.free.fr/pdf/Langlois_et_al_2021_Ecol_Indic.htm ).
>
> Altogether, this will allow us to increase the public awareness of the
> decoupling between what people find beautiful and ecologically functioning
> and help (hopefully) triggering a positive loop between understanding and
> perception. This might seems evident to you and unfortunately not to most
> of the public.
>
> Your help filling and sharing this survey will be very valuable :
> https://www.biodiful.org/#/beautifulcorals
>
> Thank you,
>
> Nicolas Mouquet, CNRS, MARBEC, University of Montpellier.
> https://twitter.com/NicolasMouquet
> http://nicolasmouquet.free.fr/
>
>
>
>
>
> Le 20 mai 2023 à 23:16, Peter Sale <sale at uwindsor.ca> a écrit :
>
> Nicolas and listers,
> I suspect I am missing something that will be obvious to most of you. But
> in what way will the development of predictive computer models able to
> estimate the aesthetic value of coral reefs serve to preserve or restore
> coral reefs?  Sometimes I think we get ourselves so deep down into the
> weeds, or in this case, the algorithms, that we forget what we are trying
> to accomplish. Also. I hope your survey will gather information on
> knowledge about coral reefs, because people who do not understand reefs
> often find them disappointingly brown and slimy when in fact they are
> vibrant living ecosystems of unrivaled complexity that can cause some of us
> to momentarily forget to breathe.
>
> I’m not opposed to surveys or to predictive models. But I do wonder
> sometimes where coral reef research is going.
>
> Peter Sale
> University of Windsor (Emeritus)
> www.petersalebooks.com<http://www.petersalebooks.com/>
>
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