My schedule and science-related activities over the next few months (updated May 5th, 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.

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!

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.

2024 field trips-on deck:

  1. Bahamas (Out Islands; Summer, 2024)

    The goals of this, as well as the completed 2022-2023 trips, are to acquire coral health & resilience data that will feed into the “coral health map.”

2024 fun trips-on deck:

  1. Jordan, Bolivia+Paraguay (no clue when)

2024 field trips completed:

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

2023 field trips completed:

  1. Bahrain area coral surveys (Sept.). Check back for details.

  2. Thuwal area (Saudi Arabia) coral bleaching surveys (Sept.-Nov.).

  3. Yanbu area (Saudi Arabia) coral bleaching surveys (Aug.-Oct.).

2023 fun trips:

  1. Buffalo River (Arkansas) multi-day wilderness canoe trip.

  2. 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) 

Photo credit: Pei-Ciao Tang

Happy to have lended this photo to the International Coral Reef Initiative.