A Citizen Science Approach for Documenting Mass Coral Bleaching in the Western Indian Ocean
2025
Anderson B. Mayfield
During rapid-onset environmental catastrophes, scientists may not always have sufficient time to conduct proper environmental surveys in all representative areas. Although coral bleaching events can be predicted to a certain extent in some areas by tracking sea surface temperatures (SSTs), current models from NOAA&rsquo:s Coral Reef Watch tend to underestimate severity of bleaching in the Indian Ocean, as was evident in March 2024 when corals began bleaching after only experiencing 1&ndash:2 degree-heating weeks. To characterize the impacts of this event, I conducted citizen science-style surveys at 22 sites along a 600-km stretch of the Kenyan coastline. Thereafter, I trained an artificial intelligence (AI) to extract coral abundance and bleaching data from 2300 coral reef images spanning 11&ndash:12 hectares of reef area to estimate both coral cover and bleaching prevalence. The AI&rsquo:s accuracy was >:80%, though it was prone to false-positive bleaching classifications. Bleaching severity varied significantly across sites, as well as over time, as seawater continued to warm over the duration of the study period: on average, over 75% of all reef-building scleractinians had bleached. Across the 22 sites, the mean healthy coral cover was only 7&ndash:8%, vs. >:30% at sites in the same areas in the late 1990s. Whether these corals can recover, and then withstand such heatwaves in the future, will be known all too soon.
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