[Coral-List] Hacking the Ocean

[Ove Hoegh-Guldberg]

Dear Coral-list,

I would like to bring the following project to your attention. As you know, satellite measurements deliver critically important information, such as Sea Surface Temperature (SST), to our community.  Many of these measurements, however, are literally skin-deep (e.g. SST represent temperatures from less than the first mm only).  Solving this would provide important information about how temperature varies at the scale of organisms and ecosystems.

Pierre-Yves Cousteau (Cousteau Divers) and a group of dedicated volunteer experts (including myself) have been working on a way to gain temperature-depth information from the amateur/expert dive community.  Call it citizen science, this project has the potential to deliver vitally important information on the temperature structure of the water column - potentially linking to SST measurements provided by NOAA and other organisations.  As you know, understanding the structure of the water column is vital to a broad array of problems from the access to food for nesting seabirds to depth-related patterns in mass coral bleaching and mortality.

Please consider supporting the project, which has potential to produce useful scientific data related to ocean and climate change.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cousteau-divers-project-hermes#/story

Regards,

Ove

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg PhD FAA
Professor and Director
Global Change Institute
University of Queensland