Petersen, L.

Reef surveyors track bleaching in Bermuda in wake of NOAA alert

2013

Environment and Energy Publishing, LLC

Greenwire

The Environment and Energy Publishing's Greenwire online webpage describes the response taken to document a coral-bleaching even in Bermuda. The Catlin Seaview Survey -- led by researchers from the University of Queensland, Australia, and sponsored by the insurance and reinsurance company Catlin Group Ltd., is on a long-term mission to photograph the world's reefs with 360-degree images and 3-D video to establish a comprehensive base line for tracking damage inflicted by climate change and other threats. Mark Eakin with the NOAA Coral Reef Watch explained why the Catlin Seaview Survey observations are so valuable. They provide feedback for the forecast models and identify local differences between how corals respond under different management regimes. "We have to plan not only how do we deal with events in the short term," Eakin continued, "but how do we do the best job we can to make them more resilient in the future, knowing these events are going to be continuing and probably be getting worse."

National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP); climatic monitoring

FY2013 CRCP Project ID 743; Project Title: National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP) Implementation (Climatic Monitoring); Principal Investigator: Jessica Morgan