Efficient survey methodologies that provide comprehensive assessment of reef condition are fundamental to coral reef monitoring. Current state-of-the-art techniques in coral reef assessment rely on highly trained scientific divers to measure indices of reef health (e.g., substrate cover, species richness, coral size, coral mortality). First-generation video mosaics were an innovative survey tec...

Coral reefs are, per unit area, the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet. Their complexity and, in some places, fragility provide many complications to scientists conducting high quality research in these environments. Scientific diving has been, for the past six decades, a highly cost-effective and productive tool in coral reef research. Using high impact outputs and based main...

The world's coral reefs are being degraded, and the need to reduce local pressures to offset the effects of increasing global pressures is now widely recognized. This study investigates the spatial and temporal dynamics of coral cover, identifies the main drivers of coral mortality, and quantifies the rates of potential recovery of the Great Barrier Reef. Based on the world's most extensive tim...

Mesophotic coral ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific remain relatively unexplored, particularly at lower mesophotic depths (≥60 m), despite their potentially large spatial extent. Here, we used a remotely operated vehicle to conduct a qualitative assessment of the zooxanthellate coral community at lower mesophotic depths (60-125 m) at 10 different locations in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and ...

Monitoring changes in coral cover and composition through space and time can provide insights to reef health and assist the focus of management and conservation efforts. We used a meta-analytical approach to assess coral cover data across latitudes 10-35°S along the west Australian coast, including 25 years of data from the Ningaloo region. Current estimates of coral cover ranged between 3 and ...

CORAL is a language for specifying properties of ACOEL, a component-oriented extensional language. The design of CORAL is based on input/output automata and type state. The properties of ACOEL components that need to be verified are specified using CORAL. A verification engine will then crawl through CORAL and verify whether ACOEL can be safely executed or not. In this paper we focus on CORAL, ...

Coral reefs are biodiversity hotpots that are under significant threat due to the degradation and death of hard corals. When obligate coral-dwelling species die, the remaining species must either move or adjust to the altered conditions. Our goal was to investigate the effect of coral degradation on the ability of coral reef fishes to assess their risk of predation using alarm cues from injured...

ABSTRACT: Coral reefs prefer to reside in warm, clean, clear waters with high oxygen content. Any deterioration of their environment would affect the life of coral reefs. Therefore, coral reefs serve as an important indicator of the environmental condition. Kenting National Park enjoys the most abundant coral reefs around Taiwan. However, recent extreme weather events, such as Typhoon Morakot i...

Although benthic motile invertebrate communities encompass the vast majority of coral reef diversity, their response to habitat modification has been poorly studied. A variety of benthic species, particularly decapods, provide benefits to their coral host enabling them to cope with environmental stressors, and as a result benefit the overall diversity of coral-associated species. However, littl...

The coral-killing sponge, Terpios hoshinota is a global invasive species that has conquered coral patches within a short span of time, which has led to a significant decline in living coral cover at various geographical locations. In this study, we surveyed the linear progression and impact of the Terpios invasion on live coral patches along Palk Bay, Indian Ocean, from August 2013 to August 20...