We've put together a video to showcase the capabilities of the Aqualink platform. Designed to support your monitoring efforts, it provides an instant view of your reef with free, publicly available data. This opens up access to valuable information for everyone, from enthusiasts to scientists, anywhere in the world.
We have created an animated field guide that will describe the best practices for conducting a survey and using the Aqualink system.
We collect temperature through satellite observations or spotter (a Smart Buoy). Satellite measurements collect temperature information from the very top layer of the surface (skin temperature) based on a 5km grid. NOAA publishes observed temperatures on a daily basis and makes that available in their "Daily Global 5km Satellite Coral Bleaching Heat Stress Monitoring". Sofar Ocean imports this data into their servers and Aqualink uses their API to render the data in our web application. When a Smart Buoy is deployed we collect temperature information every hour from a depth of 1 meter as well as the moored depth which is at the sea floor.
You can easily connect your buoy by going to EDIT SITE DETAILS on your Aqualink dashboard. Click on Add custom API token and add the Spotter ID and the API. Then Click on Status and select deployed. Then press save. You can visit your Sofar Ocean account at https://spotter.sofarocean.com/ to find your Spotter ID and API. You can also find your Spotter ID on your buoy. You can also view this tutorial video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytIOdhSzddY
Heat stress is a measure of the amount of time above the 20 year historical maximum temperature. The unit of measure for heat stress is degree heating weeks. Many marine environments, like coral sites, degrade after prolonged heat exposure which is why this is an important metric.
Scroll to the bottom of your dashboard for your site and click on "ADD NEW SURVEY". Follow the steps and add comments and pictures to your survey session.
Watch this video on how to upload surveys and best practices. https://youtu.be/ov64mc2Da_k
The upload process will update any row that has changed and will also include any new rows inserted.
Aqualink allows you to conduct surveys in many different ways depending on what your goal is with your monitoring efforts. First, choose your survey site. Then select survey points, which are multiple points within your survey site. Depending on your methods, this can look different. Examples of survey methods that work well in Aqualink are photo quadrant in a transect, quadrant intercept in a transect, point intersect (with quadrant or transect), or simply using known locations within your survey site that you can continuously monitor. For transects, each quadrant or point will be a survey point. The entire transect will be the survey site.
Add comments to the survey and each survey point. The comments can include all the observations and data that you have from that survey session. Write the details of the corals that appeared based on your goals with your monitoring efforts. For example, you can display if the corals were healthy, bleached, or what percent of coral cover they had. You can also add information such as Crown of Thorns Starfish culled.
If your survey method is taking pictures of corals in known locations, for example, we recommend that you take the image from the exact same angles and distance. This provides the best comparison between survey sessions. One good example of this is: https://aqualink.org/sites/2943/points/558
The surveys will be lined up at the bottom of your dashboard page in chronological order. Each survey includes all of the survey points that you have added. When clicking on a survey point, you'll see all the surveys conducted at that survey point chronologically. This enables you to monitor a single point in your reef over a longer period.
We allow HOBO data (HOBO data loggers), meteorological data, and overall water quality data that can be gathered by any sonde or method. For the overall water quality data, we have two types of dashboard cards, and they are named Sonde data and HUI data on Aqualink. Sonde data includes dissolved oxygen concentration, chlorophyll concentration, acidity (pH), salinity, and turbidity. You can use all of these five parameters or just some of them when uploading data.
The HUI card includes turbidity, Nitrate Nitrite Nitrogen (NNN), pH, and Salinity. This card will display watch, warning, and alert levels once you have determined what those levels are. Please let us know what the levels are, and we'll help you display your data.
Video tutorial on how to upload Sonde data.
Video tutorial on how to upload HUI data.
Please view this document to see all the parameters and values that we currently allow. Note that you can upload a few extra parameters that won't be shown on the dashboard card, but these will be included when you download the CSV file of your site's combined dashboard data.
Please follow the templates below depending on what data you want to upload.
HOBO data, meteorological data, Sonde data, HUI data
When uploading temperature data to Aqualink, please use the "HOBO data" sensor type. If you are using a HOBO temperature logger, you can upload the raw data file. If you're using any other type of temperature logger, add a column for time and date and another column for temperature. Please use this template, and watch this video tutorial on how to upload temperature data.
Add multiple sites to your personal dashboard. You can add sites by clicking on the bookmark symbol on each individual site.
Change the view on the map to heat stress. You can do this by clicking on the "layer" symbol on the map and selecting "Heat Stress".
Go to your dashboard and click on "UPLOAD DATA" in the top right corner. Select your survey point and sensor type. If you have a .xls, .csv, or .xlsx file with your data but aren't using any of the selected sensors, please select Sonde data and continue to upload files.
A site can be placed almost anywhere in the world as long as it is placed in the ocean or sea. This is a requirement for satellite data to work.
You can have an unlimited amount of sites.
Aqualink is no longer giving away Smart Mooring buoys worldwide. However, you can still create new Aqualink sites and get dashboards just like before. If you're interested in purchasing Smart Mooring Buoys, please visit Sofar Ocean. If you have a particularly threatened reef or interesting project around coral reefs, please email us and we'll try to help you as best as we can. If you have purchased your own Sofar Smart Mooring buoy, feel free to connect it to Aqualink. Read more about that on this page or contact us at admin@aqualink.org.