What ReefHealer does over a reef.
A continuous program over a defined reef area, working in January as hard as in August: local cooling and mixing, oxygen through the column, clarity when heat is off the site and shade over the coral when it is on, and the same stations profiled at the same depths every working day. The hull count sets how much reef that area takes in.
A working day over a reef begins before the vessel does. Satellite sea-surface products and the site's own instruments say where accumulated stress is highest this week; the tide table says when the flat will be shallowest and stillest; last week's profiles say which part of the lagoon stopped mixing.
Then the boat goes to the water that scored worst and takes a full profile before the reactor is switched on.
What a working day consists of
- Profile first Temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH and turbidity through the column at fixed stations. On a reef flat that means several shallow casts, because oxygen at the lagoon mouth says nothing about its back corner.
- Break the cap, if there is one Where warm surface water sits on cooler water and refuses to mix, the vessel draws off the cooler layer beneath and puts it back where the colonies sit. Where the column is already mixing, this step is skipped. The cover still goes over the reef, since shade needs no cap.
- Oxygen through the column Water is drawn in, saturated in the reactor, and put straight back into the layer that needs it. Sub-micron gas does not rise and burst, so the cloud stays in suspension for hours after a pass, stretching a hull's gas budget and leaving a scattering layer between the sun and the coral. A laboratory study of aeration reports oxygen transfer efficiency 1.5 times that of coarse bubbles; other studies report higher multiples, and a hull is sized off 1.5.
- Clarity, by taking the water aboard Where bloom material or organic load is cutting the light, that water is drawn into the reactor and handed back clear to the spot it came off, inside the limits written for that discharge. Under active heat stress this step is left out and the shade duty takes the pass.
- Profile again, same stations Same points, same depths, same instruments, before and after. Both sets go to the institution holding the program's standing record as they are logged.
What is contracted over living coral
Over living coral, a client buys the state of the water and the safety envelope drawn around it: no list of reagents, no machine setting. Dissolved gas over your coral is held inside limits agreed before a hull moves, and widening that envelope is a change to the agreement that goes back to the authority that set it. The crew owns the route through it: which chemistry suits this reef, season and stressor, chosen against live in-situ and satellite analytics alongside instrument and laboratory work, and answered for afterward. Those readings sharpen every year, and the route moves with them. You or your qualified authorized agents can halt an active deployment on a suspected breach until it clears.
In seawater, ozone goes after bromide roughly eighty-three times more readily than chloride, and the hypobromite that results can carry on to bromate, a stable end product that cannot be quenched afterward. How much forms depends on the water: it needs bromide over a threshold, and ozone is spent across the dissolved carbon around a reef as well. So an oxidative reaction is run where it can be instrumented, inline sensors can cut the oxidant without waiting for a person, and the governing number is what the water reads on the way out, confirmed by a laboratory that does not report to the crew.
Where oxidation is run, the hull works clear of living coral. The water does not travel. It comes through the reactor at high flow and goes back essentially where it was drawn, on the same pass, with no tank aboard and nothing held back. The discharge answers to the residual limit your marine authority sets for that receiving water, written into the service level agreement before a hull sails. No fixed bromate figure appears in a ReefHealer scope: a drinking-water number was never the right test for a lagoon, and a published one would be wrong on the next reef along. The park authority can put an active deployment on hold on any suspected infraction until it is cleared.
Clarity comes from taking turbid water in and handing clear water back, which in a lagoon with limited exchange is the difference between a treatment and a deposit. The duty is held to the state the water leaves in, under limits agreed with the authority holding jurisdiction, with a verifier outside the program reading the crew's instrument record. Reef water varies enough that a program carries separation and treatment capability beyond the oxidation stage, chosen by what produces that final state.
Heat trades one duty for the other
During active heat stress the clarity work stops and shading takes its place. The gas duties never stand down. Moderate turbidity is doing the shading a bleaching colony needs, and stripping it out inside the window would remove the one thing on that site working in the coral's favor. A nanobubble cloud goes over the same water instead, each bubble scattering back a little sunlight, while the oxygen duty runs through the column beneath. That answers part of what heat does to a reef, never all of it, over the area the hulls work.
No cooling result has been measured over coral. The first has to come off a calibration phase over your own reef. The duties trade back when the accumulation comes off the record.
What is published, and where it was measured
Three records sit behind this platform. None was taken over coral.
The physics is published: sub-micron bubbles hold in suspension for hours, and their gas-transfer advantage over conventional aeration has been measured. NOAA's coastal science centers reported in 2018 that an ozone nanobubble system cleared algae from an eight-acre Florida pond inside two days, with reoxygenation held and no apparent harm to aquatic life. A 2020 NCCOS-affiliated ballast-water evaluation found no statistically significant adverse residual toxicity in receiving water. Both used other operators' equipment.
The licensee's own field record is a Florida DEP permit, FLOA00062, granted in September 2024 for red tide trial work and independently logged by the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program and START. The estuary program backed the application technically, accepted none of the funding, and wants to be the body taking the measurements when open-water evidence is produced. No open-water result has been published for this class of treatment, by this group or anyone else; the published record runs to pond scale and ballast-tank scale.
So a first reef program is written as a calibration phase: a bounded area, pass and fail parameters agreed before the vessel arrives, an independent institution taking the readings, and pricing to match.
How a program is shaped
Scoped to a reef area and a subscription, not to a day rate.
Heat comes off a reef slowly and goes on for years, so the work does not stop when the alert level does. Hulls, gas supply and crew accreditation sit inside the zone long before any thermal window opens, because a colony that reaches one already spent has no margin left. What is sold is the state of that water, read at fixed stations on a cadence written into the agreement.
An emergency response pays for short-notice charters, permitting under pressure, and water already past the point where small corrections do anything. A standing program has absorbed all of that. You are paying ahead of the loss.
Vessel tier to water
A Nimble hull suits a single house reef, a nursery block or a shallow lagoon. Standard covers a reef margin or a marine park zone. Mega belongs to national programs, where what gets sized is a fleet and the replenishment that keeps it on the water.
Calibration before commitment
A bounded area, agreed measurements and thresholds, run on your reef before either side commits to a standing subscription. Both read the same instruments; either can walk at the end.
What the subscription covers
The state of the water across the whole reef area, continuously. Gases, natural augments, telemetry and reporting sit inside that, and none of it is billed as boat hours. It is canceled on two grounds only: performance outside the agreed spec, or a client past the minimum period who is not satisfied, for any reason. Where an Aquatic Prosperity service zone already exists, the reef duties can be added as a variation to the agreement in force.
Alongside the reef work already running
Nursery and outplanting programs, no-take enforcement, mooring buoys and catchment work all do things a vessel cannot. The best reef outcomes we expect to see will be jointly produced.
Before you commission anything
Validation, controls and severe events
Has this been validated on a reef?
No. Pond scale and ballast water, both on somebody else's equipment, plus one Florida trial permit for red tide work. Nothing published on coral.
A first reef program is a calibration phase with agreed parameters, described and priced as one.
What controls what goes into the water over our reef?
The service level agreement. It names the state the water has to reach and the safety parameters around it.
The chemistry used over a particular reef, season and stressor is the operating company's to select and answer for, held between a licensee and its active service clients, and it moves as the analytics improve. The envelope does not move without your authority: dissolved gas over the reef stays inside the limits agreed before a hull sails.
For bromate, the governing limit is the one your marine authority sets for that receiving water, written into the agreement before a hull sails. Where no authority has set one, the discharge stays inside the known safety limits for marine life. Instruments read continuously and can cut the oxidant themselves, and an independent laboratory confirms the stable end product they cannot see.
Reference: Ozone: Science & Engineering, on bromate in seawater
Will this save my reef through a severe event?
No. No subscription settles ahead of time whether a severe event is survivable. On offer is the load a colony carries into the window and the sun kept off it while the heat runs, and cover works over a reef with nothing local wrong as readily as over a stalled lagoon.
A reef carrying both loads has the most to gain. Everywhere else it comes down to how much reef you want held, how many hulls that is, and what the reef is worth to whoever holds the budget. A reef far enough into a severe event has little left to protect, and you hear that at the site read, with no quote attached.
Aquatic Prosperity as a Service
Bring your monitoring data.
Survey results, temperature history, water-quality records and whatever local pressure you already suspect. Alarivean will tell you which part of it is workable from a hull, and which part is not.