environmental monitoring US Sea Level ‘Report Cards’ William & Mary’s Batten School and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) have released their 2024 U.S. sea level “report cards,” providing updated analyses of sea level trends and projections for 36 coastal communities. Encompass-ing 55 years of historical data, the report cards aid planning and ad-aptation efforts by analyzing rates of sea level rise and acceleration at each locality and forecasting 2050 water levels. The report cards are consolidated in an interactive dashboard, www. vims.edu/research/products/slrc, and add data from tide gauge sta-tions in Annapolis, Maryland; Sol-omons Island, Maryland; Yorktown, Virginia; and Fort Myers, Florida. Most sea level projections are based on an understanding of av-erage global sea level rise. Howev-er, sea levels do not rise uniformly around the world. Factors such as geological uplift, land subsidence, ocean currents and other processes all impact regional sea level trends. The annual release of the report cards enables coastal regions to ex-amine if past trends are changing and to alter their planning accord-ingly. The reports group localities into East Coast, Gulf Coast, West Coast and Alaskan Coast regions. Each report card shows values for monthly sea level averages, along with high-and low-water levels caused by storms and other tran-sient events, as well as a decadal signal showing the influence of lon-ger-term climate patterns, such as El Niño. Observed rates of accelera-tion are factored into future projec-tions and displayed in comparison to a linear trend line that does not account for acceleration. Most locations continue a trend of accelerating sea level rise. How-ever, projections have remained mostly uniform since reporting be-gan in 2018, apart from a few nota-ble exceptions. Acceleration is occurring in southeastern states such as South Carolina and Georgia. The fastest rates of sea level rise are occurring in Gulf states such as Texas and Louisiana. Many of the East Coast stations are accelerating quickly as well, likely due to patterns of water distribution related to glacial melt from the Greenland ice sheet. Most West Coast localities have been fairly stable, despite past pre-dictions that they would increase rapidly. temperate coral species, it offers critical insights into species range shifts and reef development under changing ocean conditions. Wetlands Conservation Tool HAUV Documents Reef Advanced Navigation ( Sea Tech-nology , August 2025), in collabo-ration with the marine consultancy O2 Marine, has revealed an explic-it visual depiction of Hall Bank, a small, nearshore reef off Fremantle in southwest Australia, located well beyond the typical latitudinal range for coral reefs. Using Hydrus, a micro-hovering AUV, the teams conducted a de-tailed survey of the reef, capturing georeferenced high-resolution im-agery and 4K video in parallel. The data show severe coral bleaching and fragmentation, laying bare a hidden yet escalating crisis at one of the world’s southernmost reefs. Three Hydrus units were simul-taneously deployed, each executing coordinated transects and lawn-mower survey patterns across dif-ferent sections of the reef. The data were used to generate a 3D digital twin of the Hall Bank seabed. The model documented the shrinking coral formations. This comes at a time when both of Australia’s two World Heri-tage-listed reefs—Ningaloo and the Great Barrier Reef—were simulta-neously hit by coral bleaching in March 2025, driven by an intense marine heatwave that drove sea sur-face temperatures up to 4° C above the summer average. The Hall Bank site is regarded as a rare and valuable example of high-latitude reef resilience, able to support extensive coral cover in cold, turbid waters, which makes it a vital natural lab for studying cli-mate adaptation. Hosting a unique mix of tropical, subtropical, and www.sea-technology.com Each year, billions of dollars go toward wetland restoration and protection. Scientists with Texas A&M AgriLife Research are leading a NASA-backed effort to develop a predictive tool that could transform how the U.S. approaches wetland conservation. The study is a three-year, $897,000 grant project fund-ed by NASA’s Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry program, with col-laborators from Pennsylvania State University. Together, the researchers are ana-lyzing big data sets, including satel-lite imagery and 25 years of weather data, to detect early warning signs of decline in tidal wetlands across the country. The goal: identify eco-logical “tipping points” before they become irreversible. Study Reveals More Extensive Ocean Acidification Damage to coral reefs, loss of habitats and a threat to survival for shell-building marine creatures are among the impacts of ocean acidi-fication. Until now, ocean acidifica-tion had not been deemed to have crossed its “planetary boundary” (defined as a 20 percent aragonite saturation state change compared to pre-industrial times); howev-er, a major new study, led by the U.K.’s Plymouth Marine Laborato-ry, NOAA, and CIMERS at Oregon State University has found that this “boundary” was actually reached around five years ago. Using the latest physical and chemical measurements in the upper ocean, combined with ad-vanced computer models and stud-ies of marine life, the research team has concluded that by 2020 the av-erage ocean condition worldwide was already very close to, and in some regions beyond, the “danger zone” for ocean acidification. The study suggests that conserva-tion measures should focus on the regions and species most vulnerable to acidification. ST September 2025 | ST 39
Sea Technology September 2025: Page 39
