While coral reefs around the world are increasingly threatened by pollution, climate change and development, scientists in Bonaire are investigating a coral reef success story.
Aimed at kicking off the International Year of the Reef, the Bonaire 2008 expedition launched earlier this month and runs through Jan.30. A team of researchers from several universities is surveying the coral ecosystems off the island of Bonaire to try and understand why those reefs remain so healthy while others in the Caribbean are suffering.
Photos and videos from the expedition are being posted at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Ocean Explorer Website. NOAA is sponsoring the investigation.
Researchers are studying both the shallow and deeper-water regions of the Bonaire reef systems, using both divers and robotic devices called Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, or AUVs.
Three AUVs will explore the reef’s “Twilight Zone,” a little-understood area that lies about 65 to 150 meters below the ocean’s surface. The devices will measure features like water currents, temperatures, acidity levels, dissolve oxygen levels and more, enabling scientists to develop a “detailed snapshot” of the reef system at all levels.
“We believe this is the first science expedition using multiple AUVs to chart Bonaire’s reefs and likely the first to do so on coral reefs anywhere,” said Mark Patterson, expedition leader and a researcher with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary. “This is important because of scale, AUVs obtain wide-area data, allowing scientists to pinpoint further investigation.”
Will researchers find the key to the Bonaire reef system’s health, and will it help us find ways to protect and save other reefs around the world? With some scientists predicting 98 percent of the world’s coral reefs could be doomed by 2050, the answers can’t come soon enough.
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Shirley Siluk Gregory
Shirley Siluk Gregory, a transplanted Chicagoan now living in Northwest Florida, represents the progressive half of Green Options' Red, Green and Blue segment. She holds a bachelor's degree in Geological Sciences from Northwestern University but graduated in 1984, just when the market for geologists was flatter than the Florida landscape. Just as well, though: she had little interest in spending her life either in a laboratory or, heaven forbid, an oil field. So, of course, she went into journalism. After extremely low-paying but fun and educational stints at several suburban Chicago weeklies and dailies, Shirley and her then-boyfriend/now-husband Scott found themselves displaced by a media buyout and spending the next several years working as freelancers. Among their credits: The Chicago Tribune, a publication for the manufactured-housing industry, and Web Hosting Magazine, a now-defunct publication that came and went with the dotcom era. Shirley's always been concerned about nature and conservation (and an avid pack-rat, as her family can attest to), but became even more rabidly interested in the environment primarily due to two factors: the growing signs that global warming was real and threatening, and the birth of her son, Noah, in 2003. Suddenly, the prospect of a world that might not be quite as habitable in 40 or 50 years took on a whole new, and personal, meaning. Living where she lives now also helped light the fire of Shirley's environmental awareness: her hometown was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and beaten up again by Hurricane Dennis in 2005. That, and the fact that she and her family were vacationing in New Orleans until the day before Katrina -- and spent 12 hours driving home for a trip that normally takes 3 -- has made Shirley deeply appreciate how fragile our lifestyles are, and how dependent they are on sound management of natural resources and sustainable living practices. That's why she's become a passionate reader and writer about all things green and sustainable.
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