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[Music]

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[Volcano Rumbling]

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[Water flowing/bubbles]

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>>I've been curious about the natural world
since I was a very small child growing up

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along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, where
I very quickly learned to study all the different

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animals and pick up trash, which led me to
study marine science and oceanography in school.

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And during my studies, I learned that the
ocean was in a great deal of trouble from

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human impacts- from overfishing, from pollution,
as well as climate change, and I wanted to

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do something about that, and for me, doing
something meant using science and technology

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to find novel ways to keep track of what was
happening in the ocean, and look for solutions.

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[Waves]

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Coral reefs are valued at billions of dollars
across the world for fisheries, sustenance

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fisheries in island nations...

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>>...tourism, and
new compounds for the pharmaceutical industry

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are two examples are how coral reefs have
contributed a lot of money and generated wealth

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for a lot of people.

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We have this tremendous wealth of different
types of ecosystems and species on this planet,

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and having these reefs around to maintain
a sort of biological stock of genetic uniqueness

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is really important for genetic diversity,
ecosystem health, and resilience of the ecosystem

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in the face of things like climate change
and other sort of stressors they may encounter

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in the future.

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>>They've been called the canary in the coal
mine, they're one of the first marine ecosystems

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to start to show very significant degradation
from ocean temperatures increasing and ocean

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acidification.

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And they're simply aren't enough people that
can be scuba diving in the water all the time

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to tell you how the coral reefs are doing,
so we need new ways to monitor them using

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things like satellite imagery that can easily
cover all parts of the world, even in places

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that you can't very readily get a person to.

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[Airplane taking off]

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What the ER-2 is doing is telling us what
coral reefs would look like from space.

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[Airplane taking off]

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[Water flowing/bubbles]

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>>I'm an environmental scientist.

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I study ecosystems.

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I study how those ecosystems are impacted
by external pressures such as climate and

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population.

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Our part in this project is to understand
the color of coral reef signatures coming

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out of the water.

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What colors will the HyspIRI sensor see?

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Live corals look very different from dead,
algae-encrusted corals, and they look very

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different from the surrounding un-colonized
sand and coral rubble.

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So by looking at the detailed spectrum of
light coming out of the water in the visible and

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near-infrared portion of the spectrum, we
believe we'll be able to say something about

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where the coral resides and how healthy it
is.

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In order to interpret the data that's being
collected by the ER-2, you have to know something

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about the inherent reflectance of the features
on the ocean floor that we're interested in-

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healthy coral, not healthy coral, bare sand,
and rubble.

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So what we're doing is we're measuring, in
water,

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the reflectance of the ocean floor,
very close to the ocean floor.

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But also we're deploying radiometers at the
ocean surface, so that we can understand the

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change in that color as it propagates through
water column to the surface.

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That's the information that needs to be taken
into consideration when we try to interpret

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the data in terms of coral health.

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We have to essentially remove the effects
of water.

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>>This is something relatively new, using satellite
imagery, using hyper-spectral imagery to categorize

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coral reefs.

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We're collecting bottom spectra underwater
of coral, algae, and sand, so that we can

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better use the hyper-spectral imagery to figure
out how much coral or algae or sand there

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are in each specific shot.

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It's not immediately obvious in a satellite
image whether a pixel is coral or algae and

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how much coral is in it.

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And to do that really well, we need to collect
both pieces of information at the same time.

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We need an airborne image, and we also need
to know exactly what's going on in the

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water.

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We can be collecting in water data to match
up with those specific images and so we know

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that in a particular pixel there's a certain
amount of coral, a certain amount of algae,

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it better informs us how, in the future, we
can remove the atmosphere and the water effects

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from the satellite data.

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[Background sound/chatter]

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>>Our autonomous kayak system is a fully autonomous
platform that's customizable, configureable,

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and made entirely with off-the-shelf components.

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It'll be towing an optical sled from the US
Naval Research Laboratory, and we'll also

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have it towing a YSI XO2 water quality parameter
monitoring sonde, which gives us the ability

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to measure chlorophyll A, fluorescent dissolved
organic matter, pH, temperature, and salinity.

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[Music]

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>>These sensors are providing timely, and volume
of data necessary to understand not only coral

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reef ecosystems, but all the other kinds of
ecosystems around the world, in the ocean

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and on land.

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And the only way we can save these ecosystems
is to understand how they respond and then

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develop mitigation methods so that we can
help them out.