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

Phillip Dustan phil.dustan at gmail.com
Fri May 26 14:47:14 UTC 2023 

Der Mouquet,
 I have been diving with hundreds of tourists along with terrestrial
naturalists, high end conservationists, and lots of marine biologists.
It is my experience that most do not know what they are looking at, let
alone whether or not the reef is healthy. Most get wrapped up in watching
fish, trying to take a photo or just staying alive underwater.  Even dive
guides only mostly know the fish and small inverts that tourists want to
scratch off their bucket list because they read about it in some modern
rendition of Skin Diver Magazine.   I've met people who were amazed when
they learned stony corals are alive! The commercialism of recreational
diving is so driven by money that tourists turn into dollars, dive trips
for the guides are all about getting a big fat tip, and the Blue
Economy rages on and on with the fallacy that tourism is a
sustainable industry.
My point is, that before you begin to query people about beauty you might
want to find out their level of experience and knowledge.
Now, with all that said, it is really very easy to know if a reef is
healthy if you've ever seen one before. Shifting baselines will skew your
data to the degree that you may not be able to distinguish between a type
one or type two error when testing your hypothesis.

On Fri, May 26, 2023 at 4:29 AM MOUQUET Nicolas <nicolas.mouquet at cnrs.fr>
wrote:

> Dear Phillip, Andreas, Peter, and coral fellows,
>
> I am glad this post triggered such interesting discussions. I want to make
> it clear that by evaluating the aesthetic of biodiversity (coral reefs, and
> any other taxa) our aim is not to say, let’s conserve what is beautiful or
> to use beauty to make people concerned about biodiversity. Actually it is
> the inverse, our point it to measure the decoupling between human
> perception of biodiversity and the reality of ecosystem health and
> functioning. Sometimes they match, sometimes not and we have then to
> communicate on this with data in hand. For instance concerning reef fishes,
> we found that the most functionally original species (and thus important to
> ecosystem functioning) were the less beautiful (
> http://nicolasmouquet.free.fr/publications/Langlois_et_al_2022_Plos_Biology.pdf).
> All this brings us to how we measure human perception of nature, how much
> this perception is disconnected to the reality of ecosystem functioning and
> how could we correct for these biases to make the public more aware of
> reality and even make them love more what they initially found not
> beautiful. We are discussing this potential positive loop between
> understanding and aesthetic here :
> http://nicolasmouquet.free.fr/pdf/Tribot_el_al_2018_PRSLB.htm
>
> By the way, we have a bias toward French speaking respondents on our
> online survey (47% of the 1500 respondents so far are French). Could you
> help me balancing this toward other countries ? Simply by sending this
> survey within your networks.
>
> Link to the survey again : https://www.biodiful.org/#/beautifulcorals
>
> And here is a text you could use. Thanks so much for helping !
>
> —————
> Subject : Help Us Understand the Beauty of Coral Reefs - Participate in
> our Survey!
>
> Dear all,
> We need your valuable input to advance our research on the aesthetic value
> of tropical coral reefs! As a part of the Marine Science Department of the
> IPB University, the Lancaster Environment Centre, the MARBEC laboratory,
> and the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia, we are
> conducting a survey to analyze human perspectives on the beauty of coral
> reefs.
>
> By participating in this survey, you will play a vital role in the
> development of predictive computer models that can estimate the aesthetic
> value of different coral reefs. Your contribution will directly contribute
> to our ongoing research efforts. Estimated completion time is approximately
> 5 minutes.
>
> Your participation is greatly appreciated, and together, we can make a
> significant impact on coral reef preservation and conservation. Please
> click the link below to start the survey:
>
> https://www.biodiful.org/#/beautifulcorals
>
> Thank you also for sharing this survey within your network (professional
> and personal). Actually we are really counting on you to trigger a snow
> ball effect and get out of our community (academia and divers). You can
> also retweet & like on twitter here :
> https://twitter.com/NicolasMouquet/status/1658020475107266563?s=20
>
> Thank you for your time and support. Let's work together to celebrate the
> beauty of coral reefs!
>
> Sincerely,
> Nicolas Mouquet, CNRS, MARBEC, University of Montpellier.
> https://twitter.com/NicolasMouquet
> http://nicolasmouquet.free.fr/
>
> —————
>
>
>
>
> Le 26 mai 2023 à 04:33, Phillip Dustan <phil.dustan at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
>  I Agree. I was a co-author on this paper. My photo time-series of
> Carysfort Reef were used to help validate the algorithm.
> https://biospherefoundation.org/project/coral-reef-change/
>
> However, there is a greater logical flaw in your thinking. For years the
> mantra has been "People only protect what they love"
> Cousteau popularized the idea and he always believed that it worked but I
> think it is fair to say that the current state of affairs is that either
> people do not love reefs or the idea is false.
> Everyone treats coral reefs as a resource that provides goods and services
> to humans when in fact reefs need all their productivity to maintain
> themselves.
> Reefs are living processes and that is what makes them beautiful to
> humans, a healthy reef glows with life.
> This can be quantified with image processing but that does not seem to add
> to their conservation unfortunately.
> Guess they need more than the perception of love to be allowed to exist in
> the Anthropocene..........
> Phil
>
>
> On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 7:59 AM Andreas Haas via Coral-List <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>> I kinda wrote such a paper a while ago dealing exactel with this topic
>> (Can
>> we measure beauty? Computational evaluation of coral reef aesthetics
>> <https://peerj.com/articles/1390/> , https://peerj.com/articles/1390/)...
>> We had a really hard time finding an outlet or reviewers because no one
>> could really understand the idea behind it, but maybe this group might
>> appreciate it.
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, May 24, 2023 at 3:20 PM MOUQUET Nicolas via Coral-List <
>> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
>>
>> > 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/>
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Coral-List mailing list
>> > Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> > https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Andreas F. Haas
>> Department of Marine Microbiology and Biogeochemistry
>> NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
>> Department of Biology
>> San Diego State University, USA
>> _______________________________________________
>> Coral-List mailing list
>> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Phillip Dustan PhD
> Charleston SC  29424
> 843-953-8086 office
> 843-224-3321 (mobile)
>
> "When we try to pick out anything by itself
> we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords
> that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe. "
> *                                         John Muir 1869*
>
> *A Swim Through TIme on Carysfort Reef*
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCPJE7UE6sA
> *Raja Ampat Sustainability Project video*
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RR2SazW_VY&fbclid=IwAR09oZkEk8wQkK6LN3XzVGPgAWSujACyUfe2Ist__nYxRRSkDE_jAYqkJ7A
> *Bali Coral Bleaching 2016 video*
>
> *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxOfLTnPSUo
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxOfLTnPSUo> *
> TEDx Charleston on saving coral reefs
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwENBNrfKj4
> Google Scholar Citations:
> https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HCwfXZ0AAAAJ
>
>
>
>

-- 



Phillip Dustan PhD
Charleston SC  29424
843-953-8086 office
843-224-3321 (mobile)

"When we try to pick out anything by itself
we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords
that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe. "
*                                         John Muir 1869*

*A Swim Through TIme on Carysfort Reef*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCPJE7UE6sA
*Raja Ampat Sustainability Project video*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RR2SazW_VY&fbclid=IwAR09oZkEk8wQkK6LN3XzVGPgAWSujACyUfe2Ist__nYxRRSkDE_jAYqkJ7A
*Bali Coral Bleaching 2016 video*

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxOfLTnPSUo
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxOfLTnPSUo>*
TEDx Charleston on saving coral reefs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwENBNrfKj4
Google Scholar Citations:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HCwfXZ0AAAAJ

More information about the Coral-List mailing list