Ocean Conservation & Tidalpunk

• An increasingly common way to keep tabs on coral reef health is by measuring microorganisms in the local seawater.
• Microbial-based coral reef monitoring is excellent at detecting nutrient and health changes on a reef and can draw attention to environmental disturbances; microbes are particularly good at sending such signals because they react quickly to pollution.
• This type of monitoring can help provide a fuller, faster and lower-cost picture of reef health than visual surveys alone, the most common current method.
• Two marine scientists explain the “why” and the “how” of microbial-based reef monitoring in a recent paper.

archived (Wayback Machine)