Maxim Gorbunov (IMCS) and William Wild (SPAWARSYSCEN, San Diego) have been awarded $1.490 mil grant from the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) for their proposal "Assessing and Monitoring of DoD Coral Reef Communities Using Advanced Fluorescence Techniques" to develop the advanced bio-optical techniques and methodology for non-destructive assessment of the viability of coral reef communities and to validate the potential of these techniques for identification and quantification of environmental stresses at selected DoD and NOAA coral reef sites.

Coral reefs are especially susceptible to anthropogenic insult and rapidly degrade worldwide. The development of advanced technologies for environmental monitoring of coral reefs and other benthic ecosystems requires an understanding of how different environmental factors affect the key elements of the ecosystems and the selection of specific monitoring protocols that are most appropriate for the identification of particular stresses.

IMCS scientists have developed novel bio-optical techniques and a set of instrumentation for measuring photosynthetic characteristics and assessing the physiological status of corals and other benthic organisms. This advanced technology relies on the established relationship between fluorescence emission and the efficiency of photosynthetic processes and provides a comprehensive suite of physiological characteristics of the organism. These parameters are particularly sensitive to environmental stresses, such as thermal stress, nutrient availability, and anthropogenic insults (as heavy metal or petroleum contamination).

In this collaborative effort, the IMCS, Navy, and NOAA team will employ the technology developed at Rutgers to monitor the health of coral ecosystems at selected DoD and NOAA coral reef sites and to validate the potential of this technology for identification and quantification of environmental stresses. It is envisioned that the developed technology will be incorporated into long-term environmental monitoring programs, both military and civil, for the assessment and monitoring of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

This program will incorporate undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral researchers over the next few years in lab studies and the field efforts located in the Caribbean and Hawaii.

Professor Gorbunov measures the photosynthetic activity of coral using his developed underwater fluorometer (Photo cred. Kevin Wyman)

IMCS Coral Laboratory, housing a variety of Indo-Pacific coral species used for research.