144 extent of fishing industries, and freshwater sources that flow into the ocean. The maps promote transparency. Shared with people who live on the inhabited islands, GIS maps help everyone understand the study’s objective of measuring ecological health. The maps also support the data-gathering process, which includes both low- and hightech components. Divers swim the reefs, making observations that fall in various categories, such as coral conditions and the amount of wildlife. These categories become individual data layers on the map. Divers carry still cameras that record one geotagged image every second. This amounts to millions of images added to the map, documenting the conditions of reefs for further study. “One of the first things we observed, with the help of image-based mapping products, is that the idea that every coral on the planet is suffering is a complete fallacy. What’s actually happening is that every coral on the planet is growing. But in patches, we’re seeing a lot of them die.” — Stuart Sandin, ecology professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego Coral Fights Back The situation may not be universally dire, Sandin added, but it is urgent. “Every coral we see is fighting,” he said. “They’re getting hit, site by site, by different stressors, like pollution and overfishing, and some of the hot-water events they can’t recover from. But there is resilience.” The data-gathering cameras serve a dual purpose. They document reefs that have not been able to recover from the stressors, particularly those linked to extreme weather. At the same time, the cameras serve to document the resilience. Both objectives help researchers understand how coral can thrive under modern conditions. Underwater Digital Twins The amount of data collected by the 100 Island Challenge is staggering. And it’s all feeding into the digital twin. The selection of regions and islands within regions is strategic, with an aim to capture the variability of environmental conditions.
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