• See near real-time data
http://hotspot.aoml.noaa.gov/crw/crw_data_bahamas.html

Healthy Oculina coral in Pacific

With the world’s coral reefs in crisis, a 15-foot buoy is now bobbing in warm Caribbean waters, providing a critical link in an early warning system developed by NOAA scientists to alert them of coral reef bleaching. Already about 27 percent of the world's coral reefs are gone. The single largest cause is massive climate-related bleaching that, in just nine months in 1998, destroyed about 16 percent of the world's reefs.

The first of a series of buoys in the Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS), the device is measuring environmental characteristics, such as air temperature, wind speed and direction, and ultraviolet radiation and, via satellite, sending these measurements to a receiving station at NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and meteorological Laboratory (AOML) in Miami. CREWS software was developed through near real-time data input from both the SEAKEYS network in the Florida keys and the Australian Institute of Marine Science's Weather Network.

Each measurement is being monitored by specialized computer programs that signal scientists when conditions are conducive to coral bleaching -- a serious state resulting in reef-building corals expelling the algae that give them their color. Bleaching can lead to mass coral mortality.

Bleached Montipora coral in Australia Credit: Ray Berkelmans/Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

Corals throughout the Caribbean are bleaching (casting out their algae).

Bleached Acropora coral in Florida Keys Credit: Larry Benvenuti

"Now that the buoy is in the water, its first mission will be to monitor the synergistic effects of UV radiation and abnormally warm sea water on mass coral bleaching," said Jim Hendee, of AOML.

The ocean temperature data will also be used to validate remotely sensed ocean temperatures from NOAA's HotSpot program, developed by Al Strong of NOAA's National Environmental, Satellite, Data, and Information Service. HotSpot satellite products predict where bleaching may occur because of abnormally warm ocean temperatures. Together, Jim Hendee's and Al Strong's efforts make up NOAA's new Coral Reef Watch program for predicting and understanding coral bleaching.

The debut buoy, the R/V Kristina, was named for the director of NOAA's Florida laboratory-Kristina Katsaros, the donor of the buoy. The buoy consists of a platform with a 12-foot tower in the center. Instruments are located from the top of the tower to three feet under the water. The buoy is deployed at Rainbow Gardens Reef, near NOAA's Caribbean Marine Research Center at Lee Stocking Island in the Bahamas. It is the first in a series of CREWS buoys and stations planned for installation near all major U.S. coral reefs, including Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii, American Samoa, and Guam.

Links:

• NOAA's Coral Health and Monitoring Program

• NOAA's Coral Reef HotSpots

• NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory

• NOAA's National Environmental, Satellite, Data, and Information Service

• NOAA Research

• NOAA's Coral Reef Page

• NOAA Photo Library - Coral Kingdom Album, National Undersea Research Program Album