[Coral-List] A simple non-invasive way to monitor coral bleaching for you to use!

Kylie Jennings K.Jennings at uq.edu.au
Mon Feb 9 23:00:57 EST 2004


A simple non-invasive way to monitor coral bleaching for you to use!

CoralWatch is a team of vision and coral biologists at the University of 
Queensland who have developed a simple and non-invasive tool for monitoring 
coral bleaching. A colour matching chart has been composed which displays 
coloured squares. The colours are arranged in brightness series and each 
square corresponds to a concentration of symbionts contained in the coral 
tissue, a bleaching or recovery sequence.

Participants simply match the colour of the coral with one of the colours 
in the coral health monitoring chart. They then record the matching colour 
codes along with coral type, zone and temperature on the website data 
sheet. The data submitted by participants will be analysed and made 
available on the project's website www.CoralWatch.org. With the help of the 
colour charts anyone in the world can monitor the health of the coral reef 
on their doorstep.

You can use the CoralWatch chart to run your own monitoring project and 
also to contribute to the worldwide data. Reef Check is currently 
distributing CoralWatch charts internationally to all of its' monitoring 
participants. Not only is this data available to researchers it will also 
educate the public about coral bleaching and its devastating effect on 
coral reefs. Several schools and university groups are using the charts 
currently and we hope to distribute more widely in an effort to educate soon.

With this data we will be able to answer the questions about large- and 
small-scale pattern of coral bleaching, duration and severity of coral 
bleaching, large- and small-scale pattern of recovery & other events that 
lead to bleaching.

If you would like a CoralWatch chart to monitor your reef, please email 
K.Jennings at uq.edu.au. We ask that in return, you enter all collected data 
in the CoralWatch website www.CoralWatch.org so that we can all get a 
better understanding of coral bleaching patterns worldwide. This is of 
course optional but the data will be maintained there for all to use. 
Please visit www.CoralWatch.org for more information.


Ms Kylie Jennings
Research Project Manager
Vision Touch & Hearing Research Centre
School of Biomedical Sciences
The University of Queensland
Queensland 4072 Australia
Ph (07) 3365 4063 Fax (07) 3365 4522 (Int +61 7)
K.Jennings at uq.edu.au
www.vthrc.uq.edu.au/ecovis
www.coralwatch.org




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