142 “The timely issue was that we were seeing a ton of degradation,” he said. “It was no longer just a discussion about these ecological principles.” Coral health became a matter of global urgency that highlighted a possible tipping point, with coral decline contributing to biodiversity loss. Sandin was drawn to the question of local and direct human influences, like overfishing and pollution. He realized that this was, at its roots, a spatial question and it was urgent. If humans were causing harm, changes could be made to reduce the impact. Analyzing the connection involved assessing the influence of humans on nearby reefs. One of the earliest inquiries Sandin and his Scripps colleagues made involved the Line Islands, 11 atolls in the central Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles south of Hawaii. The mix of inhabited and uninhabited atolls belong to the Republic of Kiribati (pronounced “KIR-ee-bas”) and US territories. Studies of the coral reefs near the uninhabited islands yielded positive results. “The baseline ecosystems were everything we dreamt of,” Sandin said. “Tons of big sharks, big corals, clean water. We thought it was cool that those conditions still exist.” A dual-camera rig captures high-resolution images that can be stitched into a 3D composite for ongoing analysis of each reef.
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