Pacific Panama

2020 saw the creation of an exciting partnership between Panama's Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and SY Acadia, via a week-long workshop and welcoming introduction to all the departments of STRI a 5-year project was born. A protect to identify the possible strength of corals of the TEP as there is a belief that due to their location and evolution of previous effects and stresses on them they may hold a resilience against some aspects and features of stressors from climate change we are seeing all over our world's oceans. The goal of the Project, The Rohr Reef Resilience Project is a developing frame work centered around the work of Dr Davey Kline and his team, were a frame work of data will be collected multiple times a year to account for seasons and over multiple years to account for climate and global factor in three destinations, Las Perlas, Isla Iguana and Coiba National Park. This will allow us to gain and see change as seasonal and annual factors and stressors of currents, temperatures and upwellings etc occur. However this is not a Panama based experiment, however initially a Tropical Eastern Pacific experiment. The RRRP has critical expansion plans to partner with local institutes and teams across the TEP to incorporate the Galapagos, Cocos of Costa Rica, Clipperton, the Revillagigedo islands of Mexico and in time include Malpelo of Columbia and if suitable further costal destinations and out into the north and south Pacific. This exciting partnership has created unexpected partnerships with individuals from the MaxPlacnk Climate Institute, photographic engineers from the University of Haifa in Isreal and more. This initial study documented below via coral breaching will be taken across the noted destinations and in the years ahead will shine light on the unique and individual abilities of the species of coral we see across the TEP.