Title: Chief Scientist Name: Andrew Bruckner Questions: What do you do? I am a Coral Reef Ecologist. I am working to identify strategies to halt the degradation of coral reefs and promote their conservation and sustainable use. As Chief Scientist,
Biodiversity is the diversity of life from genes to ecosystems. Somewhere between these two extremes are habitats. Habitats are, simply speaking, an area where flora and fauna settle, live, feed, reproduce and die. More formally, marine habitats can be defined
What Does Coral Eat? While it is widely known that tropical corals have the ability to grow and prosper, thanks to the small algae (zooxanthellae) present in their tissue that capture light energy and make food through photosynthesis, corals are
At the southern end of Grande Terre, is Prony Bay, a large sheltered bay at the convergence of the open ocean and two larger streams that drain the surrounding mountains and hillsides. The terrain here is unusual: dark red earth
With wind and swell building from the south and east, we identified two relatively sheltered sites north of Ile des Pins for the morning surveys. Ominous rain clouds were building in the sky to the east, but we were glad
Yesterday, while exploring a nearby island, Dive Safety Officer, Nick Cautin, spotted 15 sea snakes on the beach! We seem to be seeing them everywhere – on land, SCUBA diving, and even on the aft deck of the M/Y Golden
A key aspect of the work being done during the GRE involves the characterization of the diversity (number of different species) of different organisms – fish, corals, other invertebrates and algae. While species inventories for algae have been completed here,
The average person doesn’t get too excited about algae, which most know as seaweed. It smells when it accumulates on the beach and rots, it can outcompete coral when left unchecked, and it’s generally considered bad for reefs, especially when
Two days of diving and our coral reef research is well underway in Isle de Pins, New Caledonia. Although sea conditions were very murky, we explored three lagoonal patch reefs yesterday and successfully completed our standardized coral, benthic and fish
Our 17th mission of the Global Reef Expedition is to New Caledonia, a special collectivity (a former territory under special status) of France located in the southwest Pacific about 1200 km from Australia, and home to some of the most
