Coral Reefs Lecture Notes Update

For some time I was lecturing on coral reefs at Silliman University in the Philippines, and I am doing so again as a visiting professor at teh University of Vienna, as of now. The original lecture notes I made are still useful:

Coral Reefs Lecture Notes

Artificial “Reefs”?

I want to add a few pieces of information to these lecture notes, though: A topic which I wrote about lately are artificial reefs, or what some well-intentioned folks think are such “reefs”. There is a place for putting structures into the ocean to regenerate habitats, but I think it’s safe to say that these “reefs are used in an inflationary manner these days. More here:

Artificial Reefs: When and When Not

Mesophotic

Coral reef biology is of course an active field with a lot of insights emerging every year. One topic which interests me very much, as a tech diver (although I haven’t tech dived in a while, sadly!) are deep coral reefs, called “mesophotic” in science lingo. This is a new paper on the topic which reads well:

Slattery, M., Lesser, M. P., Rocha, L. A., Spalding, H. L., & Smith, T. B. (2024). Function and stability of mesophotic coral reefs. Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

Odette

In December 2021 typhoon Odette crashed through the Philippines, and I had the chance to dive a coral reef 2 days later; I also followed up on the reef’s recovery. This wasn’t a systematic study, but I think my dive buddy and myself made some observations (and filmed them) which are worth revisiting; it’s not too often that biologists get to look at coral reefs in these extreme times, right after a storm. Here are the videos:

Best Fishes,

Klaus