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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · 5d

If you have a chance, try to catch a show at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club. They do blues, jazz, funk, etc. and it's a really cozy venue - not a bad seat in the house!

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Reposted by Wally Rich

Danielle Spring @daniellelspring.bsky.social · Sep 8

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/...

⬇️🧵

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Reposted by Wally Rich

Ecological Oceanography Lab @eco-oce-lab.bsky.social · Jul 24

Join our team as a KAUST global fellow! An amazing postdoctoral program for early career researchers.

We study ocean-reef connections and their influence on reef function and persistence under climate change. Reach out to discuss opportunities! 🌊🧪

kgfp.kaust.edu.sa

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Reposted by Wally Rich

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · Jun 14

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

A cartoon titled ‘The Life of a Scientist’.

(The life is depicted as a set of steps, three up then three down with a character on each)

Baby: Such a mysterious world!
Child: I must search for answers
Young adult: Each answer leads me to more questions
Middle age: ... At least I've got lots of questions
Old age: Ok, I guess questions are my thing now
From grave: Such a mysterious world!

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Reposted by Wally Rich

Mongabay @mongabay.com · Apr 24

Coral reefs around the world have been subjected to unprecedented heat stress since early 2023. A new report finds heat-related coral bleaching has damaged corals in more than 80 countries, making it the most extensive bleaching event ever recorded, with no clear end in sight.

Ongoing global coral bleaching event affects 84% of world’s reefs

Coral reefs around the world have been subjected to unprecedented heat stress since early 2023. A new report finds heat-related coral bleaching has damaged corals in more than 80 countries, making it…

news.mongabay.com

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Mar 20

What happens when an entomologist-turned-marine biologist skims the latest articles in Coral Reefs: I read this as "the impact of NEONICOTINOIDS on the geomorphology of the northern Great Barrier Reef" and thought surely there can be no connection 😅

Screenshot of an article title that says "the impact of neotectonics on the geomorphology of the northern Great Barrier Reef"

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Reposted by Wally Rich

Ecological Oceanography Lab @eco-oce-lab.bsky.social · Mar 19

Just in case you haven’t seen the most recent paper from our group, @reefwally.bsky.social investigated solar bias in commonly used temperature loggers. Long story short, the accuracy of your in situ measurements depends on your deployment method and you should always shade your loggers! 🧪🌊

Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

🚨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...

Widespread inconsistency in logger deployment methods in coral reef studies may bias perceptions of thermal regimes

Ocean warming is the greatest threat to coral reefs, prompting a need to accurately monitor in situ temperatures. Advancements in sensing technologies have led to a proliferation of temperature logger...

journals.plos.org

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Reposted by Wally Rich

PLOS Climate @plosclimate.org · Mar 7

New on the Latitude blog: a round-up of some of the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary research and commentary on climate and coral reefs published in PLOS Climate.

latitude.plos.org/2025/03/cora...

Coral reef research in PLOS Climate - Latitude

Coral reefs are among our planet’s most complex and biodiverse ecosystems and play vital roles in social-ecological systems, but they are also…

latitude.plos.org

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Reposted by Wally Rich

Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · Feb 28

The U.S. NWS is a truly world-class meteorological predictive service, perhaps singularly so. Its cost of operation is only ~$3-4/yr per taxpayer—equivalent to a single cup of coffee—and yields a truly remarkable return on investment (at least 10 to 1, and perhaps 100 to 1).
3/11

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Jan 31

Read about our new paper on temperature logger best practices in the Latitude blog post! 🌊🦑

PLOS Climate @plosclimate.org · Jan 30

Is the coral reef community comparing “apples to apples” when measuring in-water temperatures?

Learn more about recent research published in PLOS Climate by @reefwally.bsky.social and colleagues in the latest Latitude blog post 👇

latitude.plos.org/2025/01/behi...

Behind the paper: investigating potential biases in coral reef temperature data - Latitude

We speak to Wally Rich and colleagues about their recent PLOS Climate publication, “Widespread inconsistency in logger deployment methods in coral reef…

latitude.plos.org

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Reposted by Wally Rich

PLOS Climate @plosclimate.org · Jan 30

Is the coral reef community comparing “apples to apples” when measuring in-water temperatures?

Learn more about recent research published in PLOS Climate by @reefwally.bsky.social and colleagues in the latest Latitude blog post 👇

latitude.plos.org/2025/01/behi...

Behind the paper: investigating potential biases in coral reef temperature data - Latitude

We speak to Wally Rich and colleagues about their recent PLOS Climate publication, “Widespread inconsistency in logger deployment methods in coral reef…

latitude.plos.org

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Jan 20

That being said, I think there's a lot of interesting work to be done on how a coral colony thermoregulates...I know some research has looked at how different morphologies can disapate heat more effectively. We still have lots to learn!

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Jan 20

To your point about measuring "what the coral feels", I think the physical properties of the coral are going to heat up in a different way than the plastic housing of a logger. The easiest way to measure across different habitats is to measure the water column itself, so long as we do it correctly

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Jan 20

Thanks for pointing this out! This is something we've mulled over as well. The problem with the models that overestimate temperature is that they are measuring temperature inside the housing, which acts like a greenhouse. Models that have a thermistor outside the housing are much more accurate.

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Jan 20

Check out the KAUST article about our recent paper on temperature logger best practices 🦑🌊

discovery.kaust.edu.sa/en/article/2...

Cheap fixes aid global coral reef conservation

Reliable and standardized ocean temperature monitoring is crucial for advancing our understanding of coral survival and guiding restoration efforts.

discovery.kaust.edu.sa

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Jan 16

I had the privilege of visiting Palmyra Atoll in 2023 and learned about these plans for releasing the Guam kingfisher. Exciting to see that the birds have arrived!

Der Führer hat immer recht! 🇺🇦 @grrlscientist.bsky.social · Jan 15

Extinct-In-The-Wild Birds Released Into Wild For First Time In 40 Years

"Global conservation partnership releases the first captive-bred population of Guam kingfishers into the wilds of Palmyra Atoll."

by @GrrlScientist via Medium

#conservation #Guam🇬🇺 #birds🦉#SciComm🧪 medium.com/grrlscientis...

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

There's much more in the paper, including modelling to estimate the amount of bias one can expect under different irradiance levels and with different shading methods. We hope this serves as a reminder to the coral reef research community to think carefully about how you deploy loggers!

A view of a coral reef with a logger deployed inside a white PVC pipe.

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

Fortunately, there is a cheap and easy way to improve data accuracy: shade your loggers! We recommend putting them inside a PVC pipe, which shades them enough from the sun but allows water to flow freely around them. With proper calibration, even cheap logger models can give reliable data.

A view of a coral reef with a white PVC pipe of about 20 cm length deployed horizontally on the reef. A temperature logger is inside, shaded from direct sunlight.

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

Moreover, if you want to directly compare temperature stress from your study site to previously-published data, you want to be sure you're comparing apples to apples. What if one logger was shaded and calibrated and the other wasn't? Clearly stating deployment details can improve data comparibility.

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

This has implications for research and management...if your logger is reading 2-3ºC above reality because it's in direct sunlight, you are overestimating heat stress at your study site. Remember, 1ºC above normal summer temps is enough to cause coral bleaching and mortality!

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

To summarize: more and more people are deploying loggers on coral reefs, but not many of us are explicitly stating whether they are properly shaded or calibrated. What's more, different models have different degrees of bias...some suffer bias even under low light, while others were unaffected!

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

Another way to visualize this is to plot the offset from the "true" temperature against irradiance on the x-axis. Here you can see the relationship is linear - as irradiance increases, the offset does too. But luckily, when you shade all models, this relationship disappears!

An 8-panel figure showing the effect of irradiance on temperature bias. Each panel shows an unshaded and a shaded treatment for each model. The unshaded treatment tends to linearly increase with increasing irradiance, while the shaded treatment shows no relationship - it's a straight horizontal line.

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

Below you can see that most loggers suffer solar bias - but some are much worse than others! In general, the brighter it is, the higher the error (that is, the logger overestimates the true temperature more when it's sunny).

A figure showing the solar bias of 8 different loggers compared to a shaded, calibrated logger. Points are color coded to irradiance levels, and brighter points (higher irradiance) have a higher offset from the true temperature than darker points (lower irradiance).

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

We then performed field trials to see how much solar bias affects loggers. First, we determined that one model (SBE-56, pictured below) is unaffected by sunlight. We compared unshaded loggers to a SBE-56 on a shallow reef flat. We also measured irradiance to relate light levels with solar bias.

A SCUBA diver installs a temperature logger on a stake hammered into a coral reef. Fish swim in the background and the entire scene is backlit by the sun.

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Wally Rich @reefwally.bsky.social · Dec 28

Our next task was to compare the "out of the box" accuracy of newly-purchsed loggers in a high-accuracy calibration bath. Accuracy varied among models, as well as a function of response time - some are spot on and others are off by 0.2-0.5ºC. Lesson 1 is calibrate your loggers before deployment!

A figure showing the mean offset of three replicate loggers from the calibration temperature. Some logger models never deviate from the true temperature while others have consistent offsets of 0.2-0.5⁰C.

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