Together with Al Curran and Paulette Peckol (Smith College) I have been part of an ongoing effort to assess the health of the world's coral reefs. The AGRRA protocol has been adopted by marine scientists all over the world so that consistent baseline data can be collected and compared. The project is coordinated through the Coral Research Group at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami, Florida.
During June, 1998, we began our initiative by working on the variety of reef types that surround San Salvador Island, Bahamas. During May, 1999, we were in Belize to determine the state of the reefs in the northern and southern Belize Barrier Reef tract. The southern reefs, in particular, were reeling from the impact of the intense El Nino event of 1998 (elevated sea surface temperatures produced widespread coral bleaching) and physical damage from Hurricane Mitch. We again headed to San Salvador in June, 2000, and had the opportunity to re-survey the same reef localities but after they had been impacted by Hurricane Floyd in late 1999. In 2001 we were back in Belize comparing the recovery exhibited by the reefs we studies in 1999. In 2002 we were again in Belize, to obtain climate records from modern and Pleistocene skeletons.
Results of this work include Peckol et al., 2003 a, b and Leonard et al., 2003.