Big thanks to @remotereefs.bsky.social, @miked-fox.bsky.social and all our co-authors for making this work happen as part of my PhD 🌊🪸

Photo above taken by Prof. Rob Dunbar from our 2022 expedition to the Chagos Archipelgo, where this data was collected.

Upwelling delivers key oceanic subsidies to coral reef communities, supporting high biological productivity.

Changes to ocean stratification with climate change may restrict this natural phenomenon, removing a potential mechanism of temperature reprieve & nutrient delivery under a warming ocean.

We link positive phases of the Indian Ocean Dipole to anomalously deep surface mixed layer depths, showing that over the past 40yrs, positive dipole phases act to depress the surface mixed layer and effectively shut down upwelling across this archipelago.

Our loggers caught the 2019 Dipole event:

Using a machine learning statistical modelling framework, we identify the prominent atmospheric & oceanographic drivers of localized upwelling across an oceanic archipelago.

We reveal critical depths of the surface mixed layer where upwelling is enhanced or reduced on these shallow coral reefs.

Using high resolution temperature observations from 10-25 m depth over 18 months, we quantify the upwelling regime across ~200km of an oceanic archipelago in the central Indian Ocean.

We use Degree Cooling Hours (DCH) as an integrated metric of the duration and magnitude of upwelling events.

New paper!

‘Climate change impacts to upwelling and shallow reef nutrient sources across an oceanic archipelago’

Out now in Limnology and Oceanography @aslo.org

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

⬇️🧵

Using high resolution temperature observations from 10-25 m depth over 18 months, we quantify the upwelling regime across ~200km of an oceanic archipelago in the central Indian Ocean.

We use Degree Cooling Hours (DCH) as an integrated metric of the duration and magnitude of upwelling events.

New paper 📢 Coral reef depth zonation patterns are not 'universal' and may be disrupted by local human impacts.

We show evidence of spatially dependent effects of depth on benthic community structure across the Pacific Ocean.

🌊🧵⬇️

Protecting existing coral reefs MUST be our priority.

A message that's been voiced several times before by @profterryhughes.bsky.social and others, but one that we should not lose sight of.

My short 'News&Views' piece in @natureecoevo.bsky.social

Link: tinyurl.com/2jfskntd

Great Barrier Reef fish reveal that large-scale macroecological patterns have changed significantly 🐟🐠

We found that changes in latitudinal diversity gradient & rising species turnover were strongly correlated with shifts in coral composition

Out now in Nature Comms www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨New paper alert! Do you deploy loggers to monitor temperature in coral reefs, or any shallow aquatic environments? Do you shade them from direct sunlight? You should! 🌊🦑 journals.plos.org/climate/arti...

What is this, a new essay on entropy? In our year 2024? And it discusses Gibbs and Jaynes and maxent? Embraces a Bayesian interpretation? A Christmas miracle! www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-entr...

🌟Fantastic PhD Opportunity on the socio-ecological implications of declining Indian Ocean predatory fishes. With Kennedy Osuka and Kate Parr @liverpooluni.bsky.social CASE partner @cordioea.bsky.social and me @sosbangor.bsky.social #phd #SocioEcological #coralreefs
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

📢New Paper Alert📢 (and first chapter of my PhD!)

We show that scale matters when quantifying motile cryptofauna on tropical coral reefs 🦀

Paper in MEPS: www.int-res.com/abstracts/me...

All of this was down by a great team of marine scientists from KAUST and Bangor University. Can't wait to revisit these sites next year and continue this project for years to come! 🦑

We also did benthic surveys and collected coral samples to characterize the reef communities at each site. We've generated hundreds of gigabytes of phototransect data and tons of frozen samples... plenty to keep us busy well after the expedition has finished!

Home for the next week! We're off to the Farasan Banks of the south-central Red Sea to repeat some coral reef surveys. We visited in early June to gather benthic data and deploy temperature loggers. This data will shed light on how the unique oceanography of this region influences reef communities 🌊