Coral Finder Toolkit

About the Coral Finder Toolkit

The Coral Finder Toolkit is made up of the Coral Finder and the Coral Hub website. The Coral Finder provides, for the first time, a practical tool for learning coral identification where it really matters, underwater.

The Coral Hub website is a centralised resource with a graded learning pathway for self-paced learning for beginner through intermediate to advanced level knowledge.

The Coral Finder (Kelley, 2009):

• is a 34 page robust plastic book that can be used underwater (or topside)
• facilitates identification of 66 of the most common Indo-Pacific hard coral genera, and 5 additional groups easily confused with hard corals
• gives the name of the coral genus in about a minute and requires little reference to text.

The Coral Hub website includes:

• a complete video training course aimed at bringing beginners through to intermediate level coral identification anywhere in the Indo Pacific
• self revision tools for people wishing to refresh their coral identification skills.
• a jargon busting terminology tool (the Termigator) to simplify basic coral taxonomy
• links to deeper knowledge.

The Coral Finder Toolkit:

• empowers motivated individuals to learn coral identification
• contains science accurate, plain language visual training resources
• synthesises the basics of coral identification in a practical, engaging and visually rich way
• is a “real world to theory” translator between:

-      coral field identifications using the Coral Finder and systematic scientific knowledge

-      visual and text based information

-      a coral’s tissue and its skeleton

-      the underwater and topside worlds

• distils expert wisdom on coral identification
• has resulted in a high (~80%) transfer of skills to the workplace.

Do you have limited access to the internet?

Do you have limited bandwidth? A DVD disc of the training and revision movies, and / or,  a disc with an offline version of this website and computer files of the training / revision movies (MP4 and WMV), can be purchased at cost plus postage and handling here.