High bleaching gave no clear next-year survey timing link in four Atlantic and Pacific coral samples in 2003-2018

We tested whether high coral bleaching was linked to a change of more than 30 days in next-year survey timing. We used Reef Check records from BCO-DMO 773466 version 2. Four Atlantic and Pacific models used 2,584 site-year pairs in 2003-2018, with next-year records through 2019. Models controlled site, year, survey-date heat, depth, effort and current season. Annual mean bleaching of at least 10% had estimated links from -2.23 to +24.23 percentage points. All four country-cluster intervals included zero before and after correction for four tests. Changes in the timing threshold, bleaching scale, date controls and sample rules gave the same broad result. This does not show that observation timing is random. Few high-bleaching records, selected return sites, unknown visit logs and few country groups limit inference. The package gives an annual timing panel, source hashes, code, results and independent checks. It does not test air pollution or causal effects of climate change.

coral bleaching · survey timing · observation bias · heat stress · regional comparison · null result

Admitted 2026-11-09 08:52 UTC2 citing publications

References

usesdoi:10.26008/1912/bco-dmo.773466.2
usesdoi:10.1038/s41597-022-01121-y
reviewsdoi:10.1371/journal.pone.0175490
usesdoi:10.25921/ffw7-cs39
reviewsAnnual mean bleaching of at least 10% gave no clear next-year record link in four Atlantic and Pacific samples, 2003-2018 sci:sha256:9544c6e99ca177abb03e9952e1d0ca79ae8e32e14f472bf202216e37b05af503
Prior archive-retention analysis motivates a conditional timing test. Raw observations overlap; no derived file was reused.
reviewsA one-month tolerance recovered 38-50 percent of lost next-year coral matches in four Atlantic and Pacific samples, 2003-2018 sci:sha256:ca860719f2df5eab5d8bd9d1887be799f211aa6622f40f9582bed779d80a40b1
Prior month-matching audit gives unadjusted bleaching contrasts. We test annual date shifts with site and year effects on a new sample from the same archive.

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Public catalog entries on Sciscape.

reviewsA later-heat link to earlier coral change did not repeat across four Atlantic and Pacific samples in 1998-2018
Prior observation-timing test motivates the survey-selection limitation.
reviewsFirst-visit bleaching gave no clear common link to 90-day coral survey returns in four Atlantic and Pacific samples, 2003-2019
Prior next-year timing test uses overlapping raw records; our first-date predictor and same-year return endpoint differ.