NASA’s Earth Venture Suborbital-2 Program has awarded BIOS scientist Dr. Eric Hochberg a grant to initiate the COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL). The three-year project will use an instrument mounted within the belly of an airplane to survey reefs around the world.  By using airborne data to calculate the amount of coral present on a reef, and to assess the processes underpinning coral reef growth or decline, CORAL provides a new and unprecedented perspective on coral reef ecosystems.

BIOS scientist and CORAL principle investigator Eric Hochberg explains the CORAL mission in a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) news release. Read on to learn more:

The Canadian Associates of BIOS (CABIOS) was founded in 1975 by the late Dr. Earlston Doe, a former BIOS Life Trustee and Bermuda-born Canadian oceanographer to honor the memory of his youngest son Learmont “Leary” Doe. The program was established to provide support for Canadian students, as well as students studying at Canadian universities and colleges, to participate in BIOS educational programs and research internships.

Earlier this year, BIOS senior scientist and coral reef ecologist Eric Hochberg published a paper in the journal Coral Reefs that put numbers to a widely accepted concept in reef science: that materials in seawater (such as phytoplankton, organic matter, or suspended sediment) can affect how much light, as well as the wavelength of light, reaches the seafloor. This, in turn, impacts the ecology of organisms, including corals and algae, that live on the seafloor and rely on that light for photosynthesis.

In the past, if you wanted to measure Bermuda’s reefs you had to don a scuba tank and dive, tape measure in hand; but now, a new scientist at Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, Dr Eric Hochberg, hopes to get a little help from above.

Last week three BIOS scientists – Tim Noyes and Dr. Eric Hochberg in the Coral Reef Ecology and Optics Lab [CREOL] and Andrew Collins in the Bermuda Ocean Acidification and Coral Reef Investigation [BEACON] Lab – presented their research at the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium [ICRS] in Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

Colonies of corals build reefs. As stony corals construct new animals on top of themselves, the lower sections die. The skeletons of these hard corals form the structure of the reef. Sand fills in the framework and calcareous algae cements it.

Coral reefs are very important coastal ecosystems throughout the world’s tropical ocean, both socio-economically and as storehouses of biodiversity. There is great concern that reefs globally are in rapid decline owing largely to local human impacts, as well as climate change. Dr Hochberg’s research focuses on how reefs and their biological communities respond to these impacts. He employs a wide range of techniques, but his work centers on optics: the study of light. In this lecture, he’ll explain how reef communities utilize light for growth and demonstrate how he uses light measurements from satellites to learn more about the nature of reefs around the world.

Dr. Eric Hochberg, one of the CRE course instructors, said, “I have two goals with CRE. The first is to teach the students our most current understanding about how coral reef ecosystems work, from the biology to the chemistry to the physics. The second goal is to give the students practical experience studying real coral reef systems. This means strapping on a SCUBA tank, getting in the water, and making scientifically rigorous observations. This is training that cannot be taught in a classroom.”

The traditional method for assessing reef health involves fieldwork; that is, going out to the reef in question and taking measurements (e.g., percentages of each coral species, etc.) of the coral, algae, and other bottom types that are present. However, these measurements only present one aspect of health: ecosystem structure. To develop a more complete picture of reef health, scientists also need to understand and be able to assess ecosystem function. In the case of coral reefs, this means quantifying the two main things that reefs do as an ecosystem: primary production (or photosynthesis) and calcification.