Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Abalone Back in the Quadrats
Seven years after seeding began on Tasmania's Lumeriah Coast, juvenile blacklip abalone are turning up in the monitoring quadrats again. Here's why that matters.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
#monitoring
52 articles
Science8 min read
Counting Fish With Sound: Acoustic Surveys Explained
How do you count fish you can't see? Acoustic surveys use sonar to turn echoes into biomass estimates. Here's how echosounders work — and their limits.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Blue Carbon9 min read
Biodiversity Credit Metrics: How to Measure a 'Unit of Nature'
Biodiversity credits need a unit. Habitat hectares, species richness, condition scores, eDNA indices — the metrics on the table, and what each one misses.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Blue Carbon11 min read
Field Sampling for Kelp Carbon: Plot Design, Replicates and Honest Error Bars
Good kelp carbon claims start with good field design. A practical guide to plots, transects, replicates, stratification and the statistics of underwater surveys.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Blue Carbon10 min read
Inside a Blue Carbon Verification: What Auditors Actually Check
A kelp restoration project's first carbon verification, told from the inside — what auditors tested, what they found, and what makes kelp credits unusual.
Priya Raman ·
Farming9 min read
Mapping Your Farm: GIS and Drone Basics for Seaweed Growers
Turn a consumer drone and free GIS software into a farm record that tracks lines, growth and problems — and makes every season smarter than the last.
Naomi Reyes ·
Farming10 min read
A Cheap Sensor Kit for Your Farm: Telemetry That Actually Helps
Build a useful kelp farm sensor kit for the price of a good anchor: DIY temperature chains, light loggers, tilt sensors and telemetry that answers real farm questions.
Naomi Reyes ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The March Canopy Census, Twelve Drone Flights a Day
Every March we fly every southern-hemisphere site at peak canopy. Twelve flights a day, dawn tides, and a data pipeline that turns pixels into a season's verdict.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Mapping the Mendocino Canopy by Drone
A week flying multispectral drone surveys over Mendocino's recovering bull kelp: fog windows, canopy maths, and where the map still needs divers.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The Buoy That Marks a Thousand Hectares
A Tidewright field note from Tasmania's Lumeriah Coast: anchoring a monitoring buoy over the thousandth seeded hectare, and what a big round number is actually worth.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: What the Holdfast Census Found in the Urchin Zone
Field notes from a winter holdfast census across a Tasmanian reseeding site: urchin counts on treated vs control transects, and what we changed for next season.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes7 min read
Field Notes: Pulling the First Holdfast Lines, Three Years In
The first Holdfast lines we ever laid are three years old and due for retrieval. What biodegradable seeding lines look like after three winters — and what they taught us.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Issuing Our First Biodiversity Credit — What It Took
The first biodiversity credit we ever issued took eleven months, three verifiers and one metric we threw away. Field notes from inside the process.
Priya Raman ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Ground-Truth Day With the Catalina Dive Co-op
Satellites and drones draw the canopy maps; divers make them honest. Field notes from a ground-truthing day with the Catalina Dive Co-op.
Tom Okafor ·
Science11 min read
How Scientists Measure Kelp Forest Resilience — The Indicators That Predict Recovery
Recruitment, grazer pressure, genetic diversity, canopy continuity: the measurable indicators ecologists use to predict whether a kelp forest will recover.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Careers9 min read
Survey Diving as a Job: Reef Transects for Pay, Not Just Joy
Ecological survey diving is real paid work — transects, counts and monitoring for agencies, consultancies and restoration programmes. Here's how the market works.
Tom Okafor ·
Blue Carbon9 min read
What MRV Actually Costs: A Line-Item Breakdown for Blue Carbon Projects
Monitoring, reporting and verification is where blue carbon's real money goes. A line-item tour of MRV budgets — and the design choices that shrink them.
Priya Raman ·
Science9 min read
Wired Reefs: What Cabled Ocean Observatories See That Ships Can't
Cabled ocean observatories plug the deep sea into fibre and power, streaming data around the clock. What these wired reefs see that research ships can't.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Science8 min read
Ocean Colour from Space: How Satellites Read the Sea
Ocean colour satellites turn faint light reflected from the sea into maps of phytoplankton, sediment and kelp. How the sensors work, what they see — and what they miss.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Farming10 min read
Early Warning Systems for Seaweed Disease: Monitoring Protocols That Work
Kelp disease moves faster than most farm visits. How to build a farm-level surveillance protocol — baseline, triggers, sampling cadence — that catches trouble early.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Farming9 min read
Sensors and Data Loggers for Small Seaweed Farms
What to measure on a small seaweed farm, with what: temperature, light, dissolved oxygen, salinity and turbidity sensors — priced, compared and integrated into daily work.
Naomi Reyes ·
Farming9 min read
Field Water Testing for Seaweed Farms: A Working Protocol
A working water-testing protocol for seaweed farms: which parameters matter, what gear to use, how often to sample, and the thresholds that trigger action.
Naomi Reyes ·
Science8 min read
Sounding Out a Forest: How Sonar Maps Kelp Reefs
Multibeam and sidescan sonar build metre-scale maps of reef relief, substrate and kelp canopy. How acoustic mapping works, and what it can and can't see.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Tagging Giant Sea Bass off Catalina
A Tidewright field note: acoustic-tagging giant sea bass near the restored kelp lines at Catalina — and what the receivers heard when the giants came back.
Jack Callum ·
Blue Carbon9 min read
MRV for Blue Carbon: How Carbon Claims Get Measured, Reported and Verified
MRV — monitoring, reporting, verification — is the machinery that makes blue carbon credits real. How coastal carbon claims get measured and audited.
Priya Raman ·
Science10 min read
Mapping a Forest With Sound: Echosounders and the 3D Shape of Kelp
Echosounders see the part of a kelp forest satellites and divers can't — its living volume. How hydroacoustic surveys map canopy height, density and biomass.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Science8 min read
eDNA Surveys: Reading an Entire Kelp Forest from a Bottle of Seawater
Environmental DNA lets scientists census a kelp forest from a few litres of seawater. How eDNA surveys work, what they miss, and why they matter.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: The Settlement Plates We Bolted to a Barren
What settles on an urchin barren, and what survives? We bolted ceramic settlement plates to Mendocino reef to find out — before and after seeding.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Five Years, One Transect: What Staying Still Teaches You
Tr L-7 is a single 30-metre transect off Tasmania surveyed every month since 2021. Five years of unglamorous re-measurement turned out to be our sharpest instrument.
Jack Callum ·
Blue Carbon10 min read
Measuring Kelp Carbon at Sea: Canopy Maps to Credit Issuance
Follow kelp carbon from satellite canopy map to verified credit: the fieldwork, biomass models, fate tracing and audits behind blue carbon MRV at sea.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Mendocino, Second Season
Two growing seasons after the barren survey: the first bull kelp fronds are up, the urchins are walking back in, and the blocks are holding. A field note.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
The Site We Left Alone: Why We Don't Seed Every Reef
A Tasmania survey block scored high on every restoration metric and we still walked away. On suitable habitat, restraint, and the reefs that don't need us.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
When the Canopy Came Back in Summer
A field note from the Mendocino coast: the morning sonar and diver eyes confirmed bull kelp canopy over our first seeded corridor, and what that number means.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Counting Otters at Catalina: A Dawn Colony-Watch and What the Numbers Told Us
Sea otters are strangers at Catalina — so when one appeared over Tidewright's restoration block, we built a dawn count around him. What the survey found.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes5 min read
Drone vs Diver: A Week of Matched Canopy Counts
For one week at Tinderbox we counted the same kelp canopy twice — once by drone, once by diver. Here's what each method caught, missed and taught us.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: A Week with the Kudjela Sea Country Rangers
Five days on sea country with the Kudjela Rangers off Tasmania's east coast: eDNA sampling, seasonal calendars, and what genuine co-management looks like on the water.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Counting the Neighbourhood Inside a Holdfast
Inside a kelp holdfast census at Tinderbox: bagging, sieving and counting the hundreds of small animals that tell us whether a restored reef is alive.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes8 min read
The First Transect After the Storm: Notes from a Mendocino Monitoring Dive
After the February storm that took eleven seeded lines at Mendocino, the first formal belt transect told a calmer, stranger story. Notes from the dive.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The Long Swim — Monitoring a Forest on Fin Power
Why Tidewright's sharpest fish census is a diver swimming 400 metres at dawn on fin power alone. A field note on roving-diver surveys off Tasmania.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Science12 min read
Measuring Kelp Biomass: From Dive Tapes to Tonnes
How scientists turn diver counts, satellite pixels and allometric equations into honest kelp biomass estimates — and why every method carries a bias.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes5 min read
The Urchin Weigh-In: Three Tonnes and a Turning Point
Every autumn we weigh the urchins culled from the barren edge at Boomer Bay. This year the scales told a different story — and changed next year's plan.
Jack Callum ·
Science7 min read
How We Map the Seafloor: Multibeam, Sidescan, Satellites and Robots
Multibeam sonar, sidescan texture, satellite bathymetry and AUVs: how modern seafloor mapping works, what each tool can resolve, and why reefs need it.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: A Sunflower Star Back on the Quadrat
A Tidewright dispatch: the first sunflower star recorded on a long-running transect since the wasting years, and an honest crew argument about what one animal means.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes6 min read
Genetic Swab Week: Two Hundred Blades, One Freezer
Once a year we swab restored and wild kelp beds across Tasmania for the provenance program. Two hundred blades, five sites, and what the lab read in them.
Dr. Elias Brandt ·
Science7 min read
The Value of Staying Put: What Long-Term Reef Records Teach Us
Decade-scale reef time series are the unglamorous backbone of kelp science. Here's what continuous monitoring reveals that snapshots never can — and why cuts hurt.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Science7 min read
Forecasting Red Tides: How Harmful Algal Bloom Bulletins Work
From satellite chlorophyll to shellfish closure thresholds, here's how harmful algal bloom forecasts are built, issued and used to keep seafood and coasts safe.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Field Notes6 min read
Field Notes: The Seedlings' First Winter
A newly seeded kelp bed meets its first storm season. Notes on depth, spacing and which lines came through the winter with their heads up.
Jack Callum ·
Science7 min read
Marine Heatwave Categories: What 'Category 4' Actually Means
Marine heatwaves are ranked Categories I–IV like cyclones — but the scale measures a temperature anomaly, not wind. Here's how the Hobday system works and how to read it.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Atlas7 min read
Puget Sound: Bull Kelp in the Inland Sea
Washington's inland sea shelters floating bull kelp beds that shelter salmon in return. A Coastal Atlas guide to its patchwork beds and citizen science.
Tom Okafor ·
Explore11 min read
How to Join a Citizen-Science Reef Survey (and Make Your Data Count)
Join a diver or snorkeller reef survey: the main program types, the training, the transects and how to make your volunteer data scientifically usable.
Tom Okafor ·
Science11 min read
How Satellites See Kelp: Remote Sensing of Coastal Canopies
From Sentinel-2 pixels to drone orthomosaics, here's how scientists detect, map and track kelp forest canopies from space — and where the limits are.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Explore9 min read
Build a Simple BRUV: Baited Remote Underwater Video for Beach Science
Step-by-step guide to building a baited remote underwater video station (BRUV) that records real fish counts for citizen-science kelp forest monitoring.
Tom Okafor ·