Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory, or CORAL, scientist Dr. Steve Dollar from the University of Hawaii takes photos of the reef floor. He will take about one thousand photos in a 10-meter-by-10-meter area and combine them into a single image. The image will be used to characterize, quantitatively, the coral community structure of that location. CORAL is in the first year of a three-year mission to survey a portion of the world’s coral reefs to assess their condition and understand the interplay of factors that influence their complex ecosystems.
Image credit: Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences/Stacy Peltier