Carefully framed questions provide the foundation and focus of monitoring programs. Here are some examples.

1. What is the extent and severity of coral bleaching?

• There are several monitoring protocols available to address this question. You should choose the option that best suits your available resources (costs and expertise).

2. How much coral died and/or recovered from the bleaching event?

• Few coral reef monitoring protocols specifically address this question. One that does provide additional methods for monitoring coral reef recovery after major bleaching events is that of the Global Coral Reef Management Network (GCRMN).

• One way to assess how much coral died as a result of a bleaching event is to do repeated surveys on three occasions (using one of the methods described above), including:

• a baseline survey of coral communities prior to bleaching;

• a survey of the extent and severity of coral bleaching at the height of the bleaching event (usually one to three months after the onset of bleaching); and

• a survey six months after the bleaching event to determine how much coral survived or died as a result of bleaching.

Unless there have been other major disturbances during that period, the differences in coral communities during and after the bleaching event should be an indication of the impacts of bleaching (i.e., what percentage died and recovered).

3. Has bleaching affected coral community composition?

• This can be assessed using the survey methods described in 1 and 2 above, but requires some expertise in identifying species and/or groups of species (e.g., by growth form).

4. Are there any areas that appear to be naturally resistant and/or resilient to coral bleaching?

5. What are the socioeconomic impacts of bleaching?