We have two main objectives during our Aquarius mission. First, we will revisit permanent photographic monitoring stations that were established in 1994 and resampled in 1998 as part of Aquarius missions led by Dr. Gittings. However, the approach is incredibly powerful because we are using the worlds most powerful computers and imaging systems - our brains and eyes. Our sampling program is more detailed than any photograph or video can capture, and the statistical design of the program in innovative and robust. Plus, our data comes up on slates and immediately gets entered into spreadsheets for analysis.
Results are almost instantaneous.
During the mission, we will post summary statistics of our work from inside Aquarius. This quick turn-around from collecting data to summarizing results is one of the advantages of the rapid assessment approach to coral reef monitoring. You can click for details about our methods or to view summary results from our previous rapid assessment work in the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas. Combined, our efforts will produce the most detailed studies ever conducted of deep reefs in the Florida Keys. Later this year we will sample several additional deep reefs in the upper, middle, and lower Keys using mixed gas diving, but we won't be able to gather as much data as we can from Aquarius.