Highlights Mixing models aid reef conservation world-wide AIMS interdisciplinary research capability in coral reef system ecology and oceanography has enabled major advances in understanding the physical processes responsible for the spatial patterns or patchiness observed during mass coral bleaching. Initial research on the GBR used a combination of hydrodynamic, thermodynamic and bathymetry models to explain how reef generated mixing is responsible for the complex patterns seen in satelite sea surface temperature images during coral bleaching events. For example, cooler surface waters are often found in areas where reefs and islands stir the water column sufficiently to mix cooler deep water up to the surface. The approach developed on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) was tested and validated at Scott Reef, an isolated coral reef in north-western Australia which suffered severe coral bleaching in 1998. Using the resources of the Institute’s state of the art oceanographic instrument pool, an intensive observational study of the circulation and water column thermodynamics was undertaken providing a unique data set to confirm the observed reef-scale patterns of coral-bleaching. Visualisation of a numerical model of the central Great Barrier Reef showing currents (arrows) and the intensity of reef-induced mixing (colour). This research provides a better understanding of the natural variability of the status of coral reefs, and their susceptibility to bleaching, in Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and is now being adopted by other organisations and applied at coral reef locations world wide. AIMS has teamed up with NOAA and The Nature Conservancy to employ this research technique in Palau to identify areas more vulnerable to coral bleaching and enable better design of Marine Protected Areas.

November 20, 2005