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Coral PaparazziLooking for a Quick Way to Spot Evidence of Coral Disease
Lights, camera, action! That's surely what it felt like to be a diseased coral in the Florida Keys during the first two weeks of August 2010. Using both an underwater, diver-operated spectrometer and an imaging spectrometer, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists collected data to determine whether certain light wavelengths or spectral signatures can be used as diagnostic indicators of coral disease. The spectrometer measures the distribution of light energy over a range of wavelengths—in this case, just visible light reflected off the coral. The imaging spectrometer collects a series of images that correspond to specific wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum—spanning visible to near-infrared light in this study—and combines them in an "image data cube," which can be thought of as a deck of cards in which each card has a unique color. Mitigation of impacts from coral diseases and syndromes requires better diagnostic techniques to detect the onset of disease; and, ideally, these techniques would be rapid and non-destructive. The ultimate goal is to develop an imaging system that could remotely sense disease-induced stress on the coral reef while being towed behind a boat, allowing much greater coverage in a day than current diver surveys. To this end, Chris Kellogg and Dave Zawada of the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Florida, collected diseased corals and small healthy corals (as controls) to scan with these various instruments. To ground-truth any optical signatures that might be discovered, they also sampled disease lesions for laboratory studies of cell and tissue anatomy (histology) and examination of microbes living on the coral. Analyses of this unique dataset will be carried out over the next year. This research was conducted under National Marine Sanctuary Permit FKNMS-2010-084.
For additional information, visit the Coral Reef Ecology Study (CREST) Web site (includes image galleries of bleached and diseased corals observed during this fieldwork) and read USGS Fact Sheet 2009-3133, "Applying New Methods to Diagnose Coral Diseases."
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in this issue:
Coral Paparazzi Chesapeake Bay Nutrient Trends Manatee Subspecies Genetically Confirmed Woods Hole Partnership Education Program International Workshop on Cold-Water Corals Gordon Research Conference on Natural Gas Hydrates Jeff Williams Receives NPS Director's Career Achievement Award Alan Cooper Awarded SCAR Medal for International Scientific Coordination |