Benjamin Neal
Head of Reef Survey Team
Bio
Ben joined the Catlin Seaview Survey team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. He runs the shallow reef survey team, taking images both and doing image interpretation and analysis, generating coral cover and other ecological data, and finally creating outreach and scientific products. He completed his PhD in 2013, studying the growth and genetic response of Caribbean corals to thermal stress and bleaching. He has conducted marine research in a variety of tropical and temperate locations, has been a commercial fisherman in Alaska, and has worked for federal and state ocean management bodies in the United States. When not diving he enjoys getting out into nature with his wife Loren, a professor of marine biology, and their young daughter Sonora. Ben and the team will be taking panoramic, high-definition images of the coral reef, as a part of the Catlin Seaview Survey, which is one of the largest worldwide surveys of the status coral reefs to date.
