Aerial surveys of coral and Trichodesium slicks on the central GBR, November 2018

Aerial surveys for coral spawning slicks were done over four mornings including the 25th of November 2018 (a check flight, no slicks expected) and the 28th, 29th and 30th of November (slicks expected). The locations were then radioed to the R.V. Apollo which conducted water samples of the slicks (only on the 28th and 29th of November).

For each flight geo-tagged images were taken of any slicks found, a hand-held GPS tracked the location of the plane and maps were annotated with the location of observed slicks.

Most of the slicks found were Trichodesmium, only a few on the last two flights appeared to be of coral material.

Images were converted in the following manner:

Photographs of the GPS were taken to measure the difference between the camera clock and the GPS

Raw image files were converted to JPEG using LightRoom

The difference between the GPS and Camera clocks was found using ExifPro 2.1

The camera images were corrected to the GPS local time using EXIFTool

The GPX track file was downloaded from the hand-held GPS

The camera images were geo-tagged using the GPX file and the EXIFTool software