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Coral Reefs are often said to be the “rainforests of the ocean”. They foster life for thousands of marine organisms ranging from the smallest phytoplankton, to the largest predatory sharks, and their health supports the lives and livelihoods of roughly half a billion people living in coastal communities.
They’re dying. Every year more and more reefs bleach out and wither away, leaving nothing behind but a graveyard of grey, colorless skeletons.
National Geographic, conjunction with Planet Labs, which operates the worlds largest fleet of Earth-observing satellites, are working to map all of the coral reefs scattered across the globe in hopes of better monitoring their health and improving our efforts to save these vitally important ecosystems.
The project took on greater meaning after suffering the deaths of two if its founders – Microsoft co-founder and avid SCUBA diver, Paul Allen, who funded the project, and Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology director, Ruth Gates, who was the projects lead scientist. Allen died suddenly of non-Hodgkin lymphoma on Oct. 15th, and Gates passed away from brain cancer on the 26th.
EcoTech 