Research

Understanding our ocean before we try to change it. Long-term monitoring across the GITA NADA Marine Protected Area, in southwest Lombok.

Our Publications Our Conservation Work

Marine research

Effective conservation starts with understanding

SORCE sits inside the GITA NADA Marine Protected Area, where coral reefs, seagrass meadows, mangrove forests and coastal communities form one connected marine landscape.

Since our field site was established in 2019 we have been building an increasingly detailed picture of what lives here, how habitats differ across the marine protected area (MPA), how communities change through time, what pressures they face, and how those changes can best be detected.

This is not research for its own sake. What we collect identifies conservation priorities, shapes and tests our own projects, contributes to scientific knowledge, and gives evidence to the Indonesian authorities and organisations responsible for managing this environment.

Because our monitoring is repeated year after year, every survey adds to something increasingly valuable: a long-term ecological record of our corner of Indonesia’s marine environment.

Diver laying transect with reel over coral
Diver placing quadrat on coral reef

GITA NADA Marine Protected Area

By the numbers

A long-term record in figures

Coral cover at deeper monitoring sites averages 17.5%, which is why we treat the MPA as a set of different reefs rather than one uniform ecosystem.

46
MPA monitoring stations
244
BRUV deployments, 2023 to 2025
328
Hours of underwater footage
32.6%
Mean live coral cover, shallow sites

What we monitor

Six programmes, one connected picture

Rather than measuring coral alone, our monitoring looks at the whole reef community, and at the habitats either side of it.

Diver laying transect tape over reef slope 01 · Long-term monitoring

The marine protected area

46 Monitoring stations

One of the foundations of our research is the long-term monitoring of GITA NADA. Our team surveys a core set of sites regularly, and plans a full survey of all 46 monitoring stations every five years; the first of these gave us our baseline dataset. Together they let habitats, depths, locations and conditions be compared, and ecological change be tracked through time.

What each survey records

  • Coral and benthic cover
  • Reef substrate and habitat condition
  • Reef fish abundance and community composition
  • Herbivorous and ecologically important fish groups
  • Invertebrates
  • Turtles, rays, sharks and other priority species
  • Reef impacts and anthropogenic pressures
  • Condition across different depths and locations
  • 46 Monitoring stations
  • 1,240 Surveys completed to date
  • 2019 Field site established
Two divers running a photo-quadrat survey over the reef 02 · Coral reefs

Measuring the foundation of the reef

32.6% Live coral cover, shallow sites

Understanding what covers the seabed is fundamental to understanding a reef. We run repeated benthic assessments using underwater photo transects and other standardised methods.

Photographs make permanent records: our scientists analyse composition in detail back at the field centre, and the same images can be revisited years later as analytical methods improve.

Recent analysis found mean live coral cover of about 32.6% at shallow sites and 17.5% at deeper ones, a reminder that spatial variation matters.

What we examine

  • Live hard coral cover
  • Coral community composition
  • Algae
  • Substrate
  • Rubble and sand
  • Other benthic organisms
  • Coral damage and reef impacts
  • Change through time
  • 32.6% Live coral cover, shallow sites
  • 17.5% Live coral cover, deeper sites
  • 860 Photo transects analysed
School of yellow goatfish 03 · Reef fish

Reefs are communities, not collections of corals

62 Fish families recorded

We monitor the fish communities that depend on these habitats, looking at abundance, diversity and community structure across the marine protected area.

That lets us ask ecological questions while tracking groups that reveal something wider: reef condition, fishing pressure, ecosystem function.

The work involves extensive identification training, so our scientific team and suitably trained participants can tell apart the Indo-Pacific groups they meet on a survey. Long-term datasets then open up questions of seasonality, habitat association and depth.

  • 62 Fish families recorded
  • 410 Species on our ID list
  • 380 Fish surveys completed
Divers with a PVC camera rig in blue water 04 · BRUV monitoring

Watching the reef without divers

244 BRUV deployments, 2023 to 2025

Not every animal behaves naturally with a diver present. Baited remote underwater video (BRUV) systems let us place a camera on the seabed and record what arrives, largely undisturbed.

Between January 2023 and December 2025 alone, the programme produced 244 deployments and roughly 328 hours of footage. That dataset has already supported peer-reviewed research into deep learning and automated video analysis for detecting ecologically important animals.

What the footage lets us investigate

  • Fish assemblages and predators
  • Sharks and rays
  • Turtles
  • Large reef fishes and other priority species
  • Habitat associations
  • Spatial and temporal patterns
  • Automated ecological monitoring
  • 244 BRUV deployments, 2023 to 2025
  • 328 Hours of footage recorded
  • 1 Peer-reviewed paper supported
Hawksbill turtle on reef 05 · Priority species

Every encounter can also be data

128 Turtles individually identified

Few things underwater are as memorable as a turtle, a shark or a ray. For our research team, each sighting is also a record.

We log every priority species encounter and for some can use photographs to identify individuals. Turtles are identified with Internet of Turtles, a global database, so each photograph adds to an individual’s record and longer-term population information.

BRUV footage, survey observations and chance encounters complement one another, building a fuller picture of the larger animals using the MPA.

  • 128 Turtles individually identified
  • 44 Manta records held
  • 12 Shark and ray species recorded
Diver with quadrat over seagrass meadow 06 · Mangroves and seagrass

The habitats either side of the reef

30,000 Mangrove nursery capacity

Mangrove forests are essential to this coast: habitat, shoreline protection, carbon storage, and the connection between land and sea. Research underpins our restoration work: we assess habitat, map degradation, monitor restoration sites and judge where planting is appropriate and whether it is establishing. That includes the nursery at Siung, the small village beside our field centre in Sekotong, with capacity for around 30,000 propagules.

Seagrass meadows are among the most productive coastal ecosystems and among the most overlooked. We monitor their distribution and condition, and how they interact with the mangroves and reefs beside them.

We are not currently restoring seagrass. The focus is on understanding it, so that conservation decisions stay evidence-led and appropriate to local conditions.

  • 30,000 Mangrove nursery capacity
  • 8 Mangrove sites monitored
  • 14 Seagrass survey sites
Diver adjusting tripod camera rig along transect

Technology in the field

Beyond a slate and a tape measure

Modern marine science needs more than a diver with a notebook. Depending on the project, we use, and train participants in, the methods below.

In the water

  • BRUVsBaited cameras left on the seabed, filming what passes without a diver present
  • Underwater photo transectsPhotographs taken at fixed points along a surveyed line
  • Diver-operated videoVideo surveys filmed by divers swimming a set route
  • Scientific photography and video analysisImagery captured to a standard, so it can be measured later

Mapping the environment

  • GPSFixing every site and station, so the same spot is surveyed each time
  • GIS mappingSurvey data turned into maps of the Marine Protected Area

Back at the station

  • CPCeCoral Point Count: estimating cover from transect photographs
  • ImageJMeasuring size, area and growth from images
  • i3SIdentifying individual animals from their natural markings

These are what turn what happens underwater into measurable data back at the field centre and, for advanced students, a chance to see far more of the research process than data collection alone.

Where it leads

Research that leads somewhere

Collecting data is only the beginning. The point of monitoring an ecosystem is not to document its decline. Our research tells us where action is needed, which interventions suit, and whether what we are doing is working.

It also travels further

Published science

Our datasets become technical reports, government reporting and peer-reviewed research, with further papers in development.

Publications & reports

The next generation

Undergraduate and postgraduate researchers run independent projects here, and the best can carry on into reporting or publication.

Research Thesis Placements

  1. Research

    Survey, monitor, record

  2. Identify

    Where action is needed

  3. Act

    Restore, remove, protect

  4. Monitor

    Track what happened

  5. Evaluate

    Did it work?

  6. Improve

    Change it, or expand it

And that is where research becomes conservation.

Research is only half of it

What we find in the water decides what we do about it, and who we teach to do it next.

Our Conservation Work Education Publications & Reports