Another year, another Maui trip!

Aloha! Our lab just got back from our annual field work trip to Maui, and we have a lot to report! We’ve been visiting Maui for over a decade to monitor coral reefs along the island’s leeward (sheltered from the wind) coast. We return to the same sites year after year and take thousands of pictures of each reef. When … Read More

An incredible story of reef recovery after coral bleaching at Palmyra Atoll

Scripps Oceanography published a press release this week celebrating the Smith Lab’s most recent publication led by Dr. Mike Fox. The paper, published in Coral Reefs on April 5th, reveals an optimistic recovery of coral reefs at Palmyra Atoll following the 2015 global bleaching event. In 2015, 90% of corals at Palmyra bleached, and an astounding 90% of those bleached corals … Read More

Orion McCarthy answers the question, “What will climate change mean for corals?”

Orion McCarthy, a 1st year PhD student in the Smith lab, recently contributed an article to the Agenda for International Development detailing what climate change might mean for corals. In his article he addresses the importance of coral reefs and details the processes that are triggered by climate change that could lead to a decrease in reef health worldwide. It’s … Read More

What are scientists saying about the fate of the Great Barrier Reef?

This week PBS interviewed scientists, including Dr. Jennifer Smith, about the effects of climate change on the health of the Great Barrier Reef. Click here to learn more about the science behind global warming and coral bleaching and what actions you can take daily to help preserve coral reefs!

Palmyra Atoll Bleaching Update (May 2016)

The abnormally warm water event associated with El Niño has been pummeling coral reefs worldwide. Last week the Sandin and Smith labs from Scripps Institution of Oceanography embarked on a rapid response expedition to survey the damage of the warm sea surface temperatures at one of our long term monitoring sites. Palmyra Atoll, a tiny island in the central Pacific, … Read More

Adventures in Chagos

By Samantha Clements. This year, during the months of March and April, I conducted coral reef benthic surveys for the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) in Chagos. Chagos is the largest archipelago in the world and lies within the British Indian Ocean Territory. The islands of the archipelago are very far from any continents and have been uninhabited … Read More