A Brief History

The Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (or ‘CBASS’) is a novel, portable experimental system used to rapidly assess the thermal stress response and limits of marine organisms (focusing on corals to date). The original system/approach was developed in the Palumbi Lab at Stanford when Dan was a postdoctoral researcher. Following its initial development, Tom Oliver made important modifications to the controller to an open-source Arduino platform. The system has since been re-designed by Dan at Old Dominion University, where it was named the CBASS, including optimizations to the controller design and an expansion to a 4/8 tank system for maximum portability.

The system is currently being by researchers worldwide, with experiments conducted on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, as well as in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Florida, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the Galápagos Islands, Panama, French Polynesia, and American Samoa.

Watch this space for more information, including upcoming workshops, manuals, and protocols!