Expedition to Curaçao: Carib­bean coral reefs of the past, present and future re­si­li­ence and warmer cli­mates
Coral near Curacao | Photo: Fleur van Duyl, NIOZ
A group of sci­ent­ists from Leib­niz Centre for Trop­ical Mar­ine Re­sear­ach (ZMT), the Royal Neth­er­lands In­sti­tute for Sea Re­search (NIOZ) and MARUM – Cen­ter for Mar­ine En­vir­on­mental Sci­ences went to Cur­a­cao to gather data on the mod­ern and fossil reefs sur­round­ing the is­land. Their ex­ped­i­tion will last from Au­gust 23rd un­til Septem­ber 3rd, and they will use state-of-the-art ap­proaches to un­der­stand how reefs have re­spon-ded and will re­spond to warmer cli­mates and higher sea levels. In parallel, they will also test low-cost instruments (such as portable sonars and drones) to develop simple (and fun) methods to gather high-resolution 3D data of nearshore ecosystems.
 
The research team as a twofold goal. First, they are set out to acquire high-resolution data on coral reefs to understand their functioning today and in the past, with the hope of using this knowledge as a key to understand future changes. Second, they aim to develop a setup to generate reproducible nearshore data that can be used not only by scientists but also by citizens at large, e.g. elementary school pupils.

You can follow the expedition and many others on our blog pages: https://www.leibniz-zmt.de/de/forschung/expeditionen.html

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