-1-

The Early Step of Healthiness Detection for Coral Quality of Life

Wahjoe Tjatur Sesulihatien1,2,7, Sompop Rungsupa3, Aran Hansuebai4, Petchporn Chawkitchareon5*,
Shiori Sasaki6 and Yasushi Kiyoki7
1

Research internship fellows, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.

Graduate School of Media and Government, Keio University, Japan.
3
Associate Professor, Aquatic Resources Research Institute, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
4
Associate Professor, Department of Imaging and Printing Technology, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
5
Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
6
Associate Professor, 7Professor, Graduate School of Media and Government, Keio University, Japan.
7.
Electronic Department, Politeknik Elektronika Negri Surabaya, Indonesia
*
Phone :662-218-6674, Fax :662-2186666, E-mail : petchporn.c@chula.ac.th
2

ABSTRACT
This research deals with the monitoring and detection of coral reef condition. The Goniophora Coral
were investigated in laboratory experiment. Parameters of investigation are temperature, light intensity

and salinity (from 10ppm to 35 ppm). Under those circumstances, the image of coral is captured and
analyzed. The important finding in this study is the feature extraction of coral healthiness : (1) event
detection, (2) survival-life time, and (3) first critical damage. For event detection, Hilbert Huang
method is applied to get the Intrinsic Mode Frequency (IMF) that represents pattern of temperature and light
intensity. Then, the image data of coral in the event feature is analyzed to get survival-life time and first
critical damage. By this feature, monitoring of coral could be accomplished effectively. Therefore,
damage of coral can be prevented. Moreover, this research addressed the method for automated monitoring
of coral healthiness
Keywords : Goniophora coral; salinity; monitoring; healthiness detection; coral quality of life
INTRODUCTION
The coral reef plays an important role in supporting 25% of marine life [1]. The fact shows that the coral
existence is highly depending on their environmental. Weather and human factor are keys in coral resilience.
In this sense, monitoring of coral reef is necessary [2]. In this sense, monitoring is necessary to control the
healthiness of coral [3]. There are several research discuss about the healthiness of coral from different point
of view but all researcher agree that there are 3 basic parameter in coral healthiness : temperature that relate
with stress of coral[4], light intensity as a vital factor in coral growth[5],and human activity as a latent threat
of coral damage[6]. However, not so many research discussing feature of healthiness monitoring whereas it
is important. This research deals with the feature extraction of monitoring the healthiness in coral life. The
system consists of signal processing and image analysis. The result is expected to be general guidance for
daily monitoring in coral reef.
METHODOLOGY
A. Subject, Data and Recording
The Goniophora coral species is investigated in laboratory experiment under circumstance of annual weather
and different salinity. The weather data recorded are light intensity data (flux) and temperature data (o C),
while the water data are salinity in range 10 ppm to 35 ppm. In the experiment, we composed different
salinities to investigate the activity of coral due to changing in environmental from 10 ppm (represent worst
pollution) to 30 ppm(represent suitable environmental). Also,water salinity that changes gradually from

15-25 ppm with interval change 2 ppm to investigate the recovery process of coral healthiness.
As a confirmation data, we utilized image data. All sensing environmental data are logged every 30 minutes
during 3 days investigation, and was confirmed by an image data.
B. Methodology
There are 2 important questions in in this research: (1) when is the best time to detect the healthiness, and (2)
how to evaluate the healthiness. To answer the question, we perform the methodology as follows:

5th International Conference on Environmental Engineering, Science and Management

The Twin Towers Hotel, Rong Muang, Bangkok, Thailand, May 11-13, 2016

-2Event Detection
We employed Hilbert Huang Method to decompose the real signal data to Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF)
along with the trend of signal [7]. By this method, the signal was break down into several trend that
represent characteristic of some event in weather condition. This data, then, was confirmed by image data
of the coral situation at the same time.
- Image Analysis
We applied image analysis to analyze the activity of Goniophora. Activity of coral is important visible
parameter that could be captured by image. We chose entropy of image and coverage object area of
Goniophora to reflect the level of healthiness.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
A. Event Detection

To extract event detection, the signal data of temperature and light intensity were decomposed into
different frequency components using EMD (Empirical Mode Decomposition). The result is IMF of sensing
signal as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

1.5

IMF1 for temperature

0.5

30.5

-0.5

-1

30
29.5

Temperature (oC)

29

-1.5

28.5
28
27.5

-2
0

27
26.5
26

20

40

60
Time

80

100

20

40

120

(a)

60
Time

80

100

120

80

100

120

(b)

1.5
1.5

0.5

IMF3 for temperature

IMF2 for temperature

0.5

-0.5

-0.5

-1

-1
-1.5

-1.5

20

40

60
Time

80

100

-2
0

120

20

40

(c )

60
Time

(d)

Figure1. The IMF of temperature data

Figure 1 illustrates several trends of temperature signal data. By an expert justification, IMF inside the
rectangular box in figure 2(b) represents the influence of temperature in this research. Therefore, we just
focus on this event time to analyze the image.
1200
200

1000

150

IML1 for temperature

Light Intensity (flux)

100

800

600

400

50
0
-50
-100

200
-150

20

40

60
Time

80

100

120

-200

20

40

60
Time

80

100

120

5th International Conference on Environmental Engineering, Science and Management

The Twin Towers Hotel, Rong Muang, Bangkok, Thailand, May 11-13, 2016

-3(a)

(b)

300

400

200

300
200

IML3 for temperature

IML2 for temperature

100

-100

100
0
-100

-200
-200

-300

-400

-300

20

40

60
Time

80

100

120

-400

20

(c )

40

60
Time

80

100

120

(d)

Figure 2. The IMF of light intensity data

Figure 2 shows IMF of light intensity. The important event is cycle of data as shown in figure 2(b). It
describes the cycle of light availability; the wave envelope is event when light is available and the flat one is
event when light is not available.
B. Image Analysis
The scenario of image data captured is written based on the event detection: (1) for daily monitoring, the
image is captured from the beginning of light presence (in this case is 09.00), the maximum light intensity
(in this case is 13.00) and the end of light intensity presence (17.00). The result is shown in figure 3.
Salinity 30 ppm

Salinity 20 ppm

After 4 hours ( 15.48)

After 8 hours (18.45)

Figure 3. The image data of Goniophora in salinity 20 ppm and 30 ppm

5th International Conference on Environmental Engineering, Science and Management

The Twin Towers Hotel, Rong Muang, Bangkok, Thailand, May 11-13, 2016

-4The image was processed by image enhancement and image analysis to get the feature that reflecting the
healthiness of Goniophora. In this research, the healthiness is indicated by entropy of image and coverage
area of Goniophora. The example result of image analysis is shown in figure 4

The best condition

Original Image

(a) Original Image

Gray scale

(b) Grayscale of image

Contrast

(c ) Contrast image
Binary Image

The worst condition

Original Image

(a) Original Image

Gray scale

(b) Grayscale of image

Contrast

(c ) Contrast image
Binary Image

(c) Binary image

Binary image
Entropy image : 0.9277
Entropy image : 0.6049
Coverage area : 0.6932
Coverage area : 0.36841
Figure 4. The example of image analysis of Goniophora for the
best healthiness and the worst healthiness

5th International Conference on Environmental Engineering, Science and Management

The Twin Towers Hotel, Rong Muang, Bangkok, Thailand, May 11-13, 2016

-5Figure 4 shows the result of image analysis of health coral and death coral. Entropy image is a statistical
measure of randomness that figure out the texture character of the image [8]. In this research, the entropy of
health coral and death coral is different. It indicates different texture of image between sick and health.
Coral reefs are home of of thousands of tiny animals so called coral polyps; they are anemones and
jellyfish. Polyps can live as an individual or live in group as a colony. If the polyp lives in suitable
environment, they can catch their food, zooplankton, actively. Health coral is recognized from number of
polyp they have. The health coral have many polyps compare with the sick one [9]. When the environment is
not suitable for the polyp, they will die or move to another coral reef [10] It is recognized in texture of the
image.
Another health indicator is tentacle. Tentacle acts as an arm to catch a prey during feeding.
The tentacles outs from its body, extending and wave in the water flow where they encounter small
fish, zooplankton, bacterioplankton, or other food particles. In the health coral, the tentacle is active to wave
everywhere, in contrast, the tentacle of sick coral no longer moves. The differences are reflected in the
coverage area of tentacle image.
C. Monitoring Feature Analysis
The objective of coral monitoring is to detect the damage of coral. Thus, the feature of monitoring is relate
with how long the coral will survive when the environment changing and how to detect damage of coral as
early as possible. In this research, we inspected the degradation of coral by their important event by
laboratories experiment. The first inspection is detecting the early damage. We analyzed the first-four-hours
of coral image and determine the damage. By expert justification, we determine the percentage of damage in
the first-four-hours. The result is shown in figure 5.
100
90
80

Degradation (%)

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
10

15

20

25
Salinity

30

35

40

Figure 5. Degradation in first-four-hours of coral under different salinity

From figure 3, it is clear that the damage of the coral is inversely proportional to salinity concentration. The
low salinity is usually found in the ocean shore line where the river and ocean meet [11] or where many
people live in [12]. The river or the people run of the fresh water that decreasing the salinity of ocean water
around it]. The graph in figure 5 shows that degradation is decline sharply in salinity up to 28 ppm, while in
28 ppm or above the, degradation is relatively small. It expresses the ability to adapt in pollute water is
tolerated until 28 ppm. The result is important for building early warning system in coral conservation. When
the salinity decreases sharply, the coral should be moved in the better area.
As a first step in automated monitoring, this research has many limitations especially in image analysis.
The difficulty in this research is inconsistency of image captured setting. It lead to ambiguity result of both
texture and coverage area of object. In this research we success to analyze the extreme condition, but we
failed to analyze in detail.
CONCLUSION
In this research, we investigated the important feature in analysis the healthiness of coral through
laboratories experiment. We observed the environmental signal data to acquire event of monitoring and the

5th International Conference on Environmental Engineering, Science and Management

The Twin Towers Hotel, Rong Muang, Bangkok, Thailand, May 11-13, 2016

-6image data to evaluate the healthiness. The result shows that there are important event in health detection and
the image data can express the healthiness by texture and coverage area. Moreover, experimental study
shows that level of coral health degradation is appraised in the early investigation. This finding is important
as a guideline for daily monitoring of coral healthiness. However, this research has limitation in image
analysis. We need more feature to leverage the accuracy of the system. In the next research, we will focused
on image captured setting and explore more about the visible feature of healthiness.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research was supported by the Global Environmental System Leaders program, Keio University, Japan.
Coral research unit was supported by Laboratory Aquatic Resources Research Institute, Chulalongkorn
University.
REFERENCE .
[1] http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/coasts/coral_reefs/
[2] Clive R Wilkinson, Global and local threats to coral reef functioning and existence: review and
predictions, Marine and Freshwater Research 50(8) 867 - 878
[3] Maynard, J.A., Turner, P.J., Anthony, K.R.N., Baird, A.H., Berkelmans, R., Eakin, C.M., Johnson ,J.E.,
Marshall, P.A., Oliver, J., Marshall, P.A., Setiasih, N. and Hansen, L .2004. A global protocol for
assessment and monitoring of coral bleaching. World Fish Center and WWF Indonesia, Jakarta,
Indonesia.
[4] Spillman, C.M., Alves, O. 2009. Dynamical seasonal prediction of summer sea surface temperatures in
the Great Barrier Reef. Coral Reefs, 28:197-206
[5] Anne Juillet-Leclerc,,Stphanie Reynaud ,Delphine Dissard, Guillaume Tisserand,Christine FerrierPags,Light is an Active Contributor to The Vital Effects of Coral Skeleton Proxies, Geochimica et
Cosmochimica Acta, Vol 140, 1 September 2014, pages 671-690
[6] Tyler C Coverdale,Nicholas C Herrmann,Andrew H Altieri,Mark D Bertness, Latent impacts: the role
of historical human activity in coastal habitat loss, Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, January
2013,page 69-74
[7] Norden Eh Huang, Hilbert-Huang Transform and Its Applications, Interdiciplinary Mathematical
Sciences Volume 16
[8] Eric M Wood, Anna M. Pidgeon,Volker C. Radeloff,Nicholas S. Keuler, Image Texture Predicts Avian
Density and Species Richness, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/
[9] G Muller-Parker, CF D'Elia, CB Cook E, Interactions betw, een corals and their symbiotic algae,
Coral Reefs in the Anthropocene, 2015.
[10] Cory J. Krediet, Kim B. Ritchie, Valerie J. Paul, Max Teplitski, Coral-associated micro-organisms and their
roles in promoting coral health and thwarting diseases, Proceeding of The Royal Society B,
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1755/20122328.short
[11] Stender Y, Jokiel PL, Rodgers KS (2014)Thirty years of coral reef change in relation to coastal
construction and increased sedimentation at Pelekane Bay, Hawaii PeerJ2e300,
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.300
[12] Stephanie L. Wear and Rebecca Vega Thurber, Sewage pollution: mitigation is key for coral reef
stewardship, Annal of The New York Academic of Sciences, Volume 1355, The Year in Ecology and
Conservation Biology pages 1530, October 2015

5th International Conference on Environmental Engineering, Science and Management

The Twin Towers Hotel, Rong Muang, Bangkok, Thailand, May 11-13, 2016