My schedule and science-related activities over the next few months (updated Dec. 8, 2024)

歡迎支持並加入國際珊瑚礁學會

Too much time at home? Dr. Coral on the hunt for sick corals.

2024 field trips & research projects

Happy (or just creepy)? This was NOT Photoshopped!

2024 work to-do list

Banda Islands, Indonesia (one of my favorite dive spots and in my top-five reef photos of all time….maybe even my favorite) — **Banda Islands, Indonesia** (one of my favorite dive spots & in my top-five photos of all time)

1. Continue building machine-learning models with the capacity to predict coral survival. I am ultimately trying to make a “coral health map.”

2. Publish articles on how to predict where resilient corals will be found: using training datasets from Taiwan and the South Pacific.

3. Wrapping up a few experimental coral husbandry projects with Taiwanese collaborator Dr. Tung-Yung Fan.

4. Developing an AI that can plan the optimal coral reef intervention.

Work and fun trips

Unbooked field trips: Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Grenada, Guyana, Montserrat, Puerto Rico, Saba, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, US Virgin Islands, and a few other spots.

To-be-scheduled fun trips: Baja-Socorro (Mexico), Egyptian & Djiboutien Red Sea.

Backburner field trips:

Bahamas (Out Islands; Summer, 2025)
The goals of this, as well as the completed 2022-2024 trips, are to acquire coral health & resilience data that will feed into the “coral health map.”

2024 fun trips-on deck:

Jordan,

2025 fun trips-on deck:

Bolivia+Paraguay (no clue when)

2024 field trips completed:

East Timor (Jan.-Feb). General benthic assessments.

2023 field trips completed:

Bahrain area coral surveys (Sept.). Check back for details.
Thuwal area (Saudi Arabia) coral bleaching surveys (Sept.-Nov.).
Yanbu area (Saudi Arabia) coral bleaching surveys (Aug.-Oct.).

2023 fun trips:

Buffalo River (Arkansas) multi-day wilderness canoe trip.
Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates (stay tuned for pics).

2022 field trips completed:

1. Dominica (June-July, 2022)-marginal reefs and combatting a disease outbreak.

2. St. Lucia (June 2022)-disease surveys and reef resilience assessments.

3. Turks and Caicos (August 2022)-disease surveys and reef resilience assessments with Explorer Ventures.

4. Bahamas (New Providence; October, 2022)-disease surveys and reef resilience assessments.

2021 field trip completed: Dry Tortugas National Park (FL, USA), an NCRMP-sponsored trip aboard the R/V Angari.

2020 field trip: my lone dives in all of that dumpster fire that was 2020 were two fun dives in Barbados in January.

2019 field trips completed: St. Vincent and Grenadines (high-CO2 vent site) and Flower Garden Banks (Gulf of Mexico)

Future, back-burner field trips: Possible field trip to Nansha Atoll (South China Sea, Taiwan; funding acquired!) and/or Puerto Galera (Philippines; proposal under review)