Marine scientists from around the world met in Australia on Wednesday to set up a digital sensor network that can monitor endangered coral reefs around the globe.
The meeting in the northeastern city of Townsville is due to launch a pilot monitoring system that will cover 400km of the nearby Great Barrier Reef, organisers said.
Eventually, the aim is to create a global network using hundreds of sensors to track threats to coral reefs like pollution and ocean temperature fluctuations, said Stuart Kininmonth of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aimds).
”That is the main purpose of the workshop, to establish a universal system that can be implemented globally,” he said.
The researchers, meeting under the auspices of the Coral Reef Environmental Observatory Network, are currently trialling sensors at sites in French Polynesia, Taiwan, the Florida Keys and the Great Barrier Reef — the world’s largest coral formation.
Kininmonth said one of the biggest challenges was relaying data from the marine sensors back to land.
”So far we have successfully transmitted data over 80km using microwave transmissions trapped inside humidity ducts,” he said. ”This has enabled us to link isolated reefs with broadband speeds.”
The sensors are roughly the size of a large soft drink bottle and have the capacity to monitor salinity, humidity, temperature, light, water flow and sediments, he said.
Coral reefs have been experiencing a global decline that scientists attribute to a combination of pollution, destructive fishing and global warming.
One of the worst dangers is bleaching, caused when the plant-like organisms that make up coral die and leave behind the white limestone skeleton of the reef.
A rise in coral bleaching has been linked to global warming, but scientists are still trying to fully understand the phenomenon and Kininmonth said the global sensor network would provide a valuable tool for such study.
”This system has the potential to monitor the extent of the marine estate from river mouths to reefs, helping to answer many unanswered questions,” he said.
The two-day meeting in Townsville involves 60 remote sensing specialists from 10 countries, including the United States, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Finland. – AFP