Andi Haas is happy to receive this funding: " With this grant we will bring one of the most important legacies of (former) Dutch coral reef science established almost 50 years ago by Dr. Rolf Bak from NIOZ into the digital age. We will continue the project, make this wealth of data - collected over 50 years - publicly available, and apply state of the art image processing and computational modelling methods to better understand the drivers of ecosystem changes." 

The NWO Domain Board Science has approved twenty-two grant applications in the Open Competition Domain Science-M programme.

Representative Images taken of a permanent photo-quadrate at Karpata, Bonaire, from 1974 (A) and 2012 (B). Inserts show benthic cover of reef building corals color coded by species. White areas denote, sand, rock, algae, soft coral, or sponge cover. Note the >80% decline within the 38 year interval.

Three-dimensional rendering of a benthic coral reef photo-quadrate annotated to map the size, structure and context of individual organisms or holobionts. (Image and annotation by Dr. Vermeij and Dr. Sandin, CARRMABI, UvA, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography)