To protect the coral reefs that Wakatobi goes to great length to protect, the resort installed a coral reef health early warning system in fall 2009. Call the Rainbow Sensor Program, arrays of sensors have been installed at two popular dive sites ‘Zoo’ and ‘Roma’.
The first data sent from the scientists in Los Angeles show the water at ‘Roma’ to be unusually free of organic components that are often the result of human sewage.
What this says is that Wakatobi’s policies of working with the local residents to protect their coral reefs from over fishing and human contaminants are working. Wakatobi’s reefs remain pristine, an unusual result for reefs that are visited by modern dive resorts.
Both the Wakatobi Resort management AND the local population should be proud of this accomplishment.
--Tom Reynolds,
Rainbow Sensor Program Manager (www.rainbowsensor.com)
The Rainbow Sensor
The Rainbow Sensor works by comparing how the reef’s water attenuates the light.
As the diver knows, water removes the sunlight unevenly, removing first the red, then orange, yellow, blue, green and so on. What most divers don’t know is that attenuation in the blue wavelength is increased by the presence of organic material.
In normal, clear seawater the green attenuation is greater than the blue attenuation. However, with the coral reefs near locations with significant human population, human waste adds organic components to the seawater. The result is that the blue attenuation is actually greater than the green attenuation, sometimes by a significant amount. When that occurs, alarm bells should sound. The reef is at risk for an algal bloom that will stifle coral growth and degrade coral health.
At ‘Roma’ however, the blue attenuation is clearly less than the green attenuation, indicating water quality unpolluted by human waste. The site routinely exhibits diver visibility in excess of 30 meters using the Rainbow Sensor Program visibility measurement process. This is a significant and difficult accomplishment for reef management.
The top graph shows the light attenuation in the white (all wavelengths), green and blue region. A larger K means more attenuation. The K in the blue region is inversely proportional to the optical depth, a scientific term that relates very closely with what divers call visibility
--Tom Reynolds
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