1. TRAVEL / SPECIES / SUBCULTURE / CONSERVATION / TRAINING / GEAR
“People protect what they love,” Jacques
Cousteau once said. But people can’t
love what they don’t understand, says
Sly Lee, founder of the Hydrous, a non-
profitcreating3-Dcoralscanstoadvance
scientific research.
Inspiredtobringsciencetothepublic,
Lee was searching for a way to commu-
nicate science in an understandable way
when he joined a 3-D mapping project
of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor. Lee
puthisexperienceonthatprojecttoward
hispassion:coralreefs.Sincethen,hehas
scanned coral reefs in Palau, Hawaii, the
Solomon Islands and Maldives.
To create the 3-D images, Lee dives
with a standard camera and scans a
33-by-33-foot section of the reef, creat-
ing about 250 photographs. Depending
on visibility, currents and complexity
of the coral, that process can take any-
where from 15 to 30 minutes. Later
processed in reality-capture software,
thephotographsbecomehigh-resolution,
interactive 3-D digital images.
Lee hopes to put this technology into
the hands of citizen scientists who can
help create a worldwide map of corals.
“The real power is to bring access to
thosewhowillneverseeacoralreef,”Lee
says. “The ultimate question is: How do
youmakesomeonecareaboutsomething
he or she will never see?”
OtherexpeditionsbyLeeandhisteam
include a journey to the Solomon Islands
to study the threatened giant bumphead
parrotfishandtoOahutomonitoramass
coral-bleaching event.
Reef
Research
Goes3-D
Innovative technology is
revolutionizing the way
scientists monitor coral reefs
BY KATRINA POGGIO
PARADISE LOSTArtificial islands in the South China Sea
despoil untouched ecosystems
BY BERNARD WILCHUSKY
Chinese development in a
remote area of the South
China Sea is threatening
one of Earth’s most diverse
and unspoiled ecosystems.
Six nations lay claim to the
region, which lies within
the 2.2-million-square-mile
Coral Triangle.
Geopolitical conflict has
led to the rise of artificial
landscapes as China vies
to bolster the legitimacy
of its territorial claims by
creating artificial islands
to act as substrate for new
military installations.
“One of the reasons
[China is] building these is-
lands there, and maintaining
these military bases, is to
establish territorial claims,”
says John McManus, a
professor of marine biol-
ogy and ecology at the
University of Miami. “In
terms of international law,
it’s very helpful to prove that
you’ve had military control
over a place when you’re
trying to establish territory.”
These earthworks,
concentrated in the Spratly
Islands located between
Vietnam and the Philippines,
are drawn up from the deep
by fleets of dredgers that
prowl the waters towing
massive metal trawlers over
the ocean floor, consuming
earth and coral alike. The
reef sections that survive
dredging are later buried
under these masses of
collected sand.
The Spratlys are
especially important to the
Coral Triangle as a larval
reservoir where juvenile fish
species are relatively safe
from commercial fishing.
“There are cases we
know of where large areas
of coral were buried as a
result of mine runoff, but
that’s nothing compared to
the amount of coral we’ve
lost in the past two years,”
McManus says. “We’re
paving over paradise.”
Mischief
Reef in the
Spratly
Islands faces
destruc-
tion; a 3-D
model of
antler coral
(below);
protected
Lake Supe-
rior waters
(opposite).
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