What ReefHealer does over a reef.
A continuous program over a defined reef area, running the whole year rather than the hot part of it. Local cooling and mixing, oxygen through the column, clarity, and the same stations profiled at the same depths every working day. A reef carried that way flourishes more readily and is knocked over less easily.
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 the first thing it does is measure rather than treat.
What a working day actually consists of
- Profile first Temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH and turbidity through the column at fixed stations. On a reef flat that means shallow work at several points rather than one cast, because a lagoon is not uniform and one cast cannot describe it.
- Break the cap, if there is one Where warm surface water is sitting on cooler water and refusing to mix, the vessel works that boundary. Where no cap exists, this step is skipped and the day's plan says so.
- Oxygen through the column Water is drawn in, saturated as it passes through 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 and keeps working through the surrounding water for hours after a pass — which is what lets a vessel-sized gas budget reach a lagoon-sized volume. Published aeration work reports the gas-transfer coefficient at roughly eleven times its conventional value for the same delivered volume; comparable studies report considerably smaller gains, and a hull is sized off the low end of that range rather than the top.
- Clarity, taken in rather than dropped out 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 that discharge was written to. And where the site is under active heat stress, this step is left out entirely, for a reason that is pure reef biology.
- Profile again, same stations The comparison that matters is the 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, what a client buys is the state of the water and the safety envelope drawn around it — not a list of reagents, and not a setting on a machine. Dissolved gas in the water over your coral is held inside limits agreed before a hull moves. Widening that envelope is not a crew's call to make on a difficult afternoon; it is a change to the agreement, and it goes back to the authority that set it. What the crew does own is the route through it: which chemistry suits this reef, this season, this stressor, chosen against live in-situ and satellite analytics alongside instrument and laboratory work, and answered for afterward. Those readings sharpen every year, which is exactly why none of it is frozen into a brochure. The envelope is contractual. The method inside it is ours, and you or your qualified authorized agents can halt an active deployment on a suspected breach until it clears.
Take the bromide chemistry, since a reviewing chemist will. In seawater ozone goes after bromide roughly eighty-three times more readily than chloride, and the hypobromite that comes out of it can carry on to bromate — a stable end product, which means it cannot be quenched afterward. Whether much of it forms is a question about the water, not a constant: it needs bromide over a threshold, and ozone is spent across the dissolved carbon around a reef as well. Which is why an oxidative reaction is run where it can be instrumented, why inline sensors can cut the oxidant without waiting for a person, and why the test that matters is what the water reads afterward rather than what the plant was set to.
Where oxidation is run, it is the hull that 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, into the same stretch of lagoon, on the same pass — a treatment plant crossing the flat, rather than a barge carrying a lagoon off somewhere to deal with it. There is no storage aboard, so there is nothing to carry. What that discharge answers to is 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 anywhere in a ReefHealer scope, because a drinking-water number was never the right test for a lagoon and a published one would be wrong on the next reef along. Readings run live, an outside laboratory confirms the stable end product instruments cannot see, and 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. What that duty is held to is the state the water leaves in — limits agreed with the authority holding jurisdiction over the lagoon, and a verifier outside the program reading the same instrument record the crew reads. Reef water varies enough that a program carries separation and treatment capability beyond the oxidation stage, and what any one event calls for is decided by what produces that final state.
And the duty that gets suspended
During active heat stress the clarity work stops. Moderate turbidity shades a reef, so stripping it out inside a bleaching window would take away the one thing on that site currently working in the coral's favor. The oxygen duty carries the water until the accumulation comes off the record.
Reef managers recognize that rule immediately, and they should. It is the point where a treatment plan stops being an equipment schedule and starts being reef biology.
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 behave as a stable suspended phase rather than as something rising to burst, and the 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.
Alarivean'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. We want them holding those instruments too. No open-water result has been published for this class of treatment — ours or anyone's — and the published record runs to pond scale and ballast-tank scale.
Which is why a first reef program is written as a calibration exercise: a bounded area, pass and fail parameters agreed before the vessel arrives, an independent institution taking the readings, and pricing that matches. A published reef result will come out of a program built that way or it will not come at all.
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 nothing left to spend. What is sold is the state of that water, not the boat that works it.
There is a cost argument in that, and reef managers get it faster than most buyers. Everything an emergency response has to pay for — chartering at short notice, permitting under pressure, working water that has already gone past the point where small corrections do anything — is what a standing program has already absorbed. Prevention is cheaper here for the same reason it is cheaper in a nursery. You are paying before the loss, not after it.
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 running a fleet rather than a boat.
Calibration before commitment
A bounded area, agreed measurements, agreed thresholds, run on your reef before either side commits to a standing subscription. Both find out what happens rather than debating what ought to.
What the subscription covers
The state of the water across the whole reef area, continuously, for as long as the subscription runs. Gases, natural augments, telemetry and reporting sit inside that, and no part of it is billed as hours of a boat. It is canceled on two grounds and no others: performance outside the agreed spec, or a client past the minimum period who is not satisfied, for any reason they like. Where an Aquatic Prosperity service zone already exists, the reef duties can be added to it rather than run as their own program.
Alongside, never instead of
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
Three answers worth having in writing
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 therefore a calibration exercise with agreed parameters, described and priced as one. Every proposal we write carries that sentence.
What controls what goes into the water over our reef?
The service level agreement, and it is written as an outcome rather than a recipe. Water quality and the safety parameters around it are the things we are held to.
Which chemistry does the work over a particular reef, in a particular season, against a particular stressor is ours to select and ours to answer for. It comes out of live in-situ and satellite analytics read beside instrumental and laboratory analysis, it is proprietary to our operators and to active service clients, and it moves as those analytics get better. What does not move without your authority is the envelope: dissolved gas over the reef stays inside the limits agreed before a hull sails.
Bromate is the residual a technical reader asks about, and it is worth answering plainly. The governing limit is the one your marine authority sets for that receiving water, written into the agreement rather than published as a standing figure, because a drinking-water value was never the right test for a lagoon. How much forms depends on the water: it wants bromide over a threshold, and the oxidant is spent on everything else dissolved around a reef. Instruments read continuously and can cut the oxidant themselves, an independent laboratory confirms the stable end product they cannot see, and you or your qualified authorized agents can put an active deployment on hold on any suspected infraction until it clears.
Reference: Ozone: Science & Engineering, on bromate in seawater
Will this save my reef through a severe event?
No, and no proposal from us will say otherwise.
A reef carrying a large local stress load and moderate accumulated heat has margin worth buying. A reef deep into a severe global event with nothing local driving it does not, and finding that out during a site read costs you an email rather than a program budget.
Aquatic Prosperity as a Service
Bring your monitoring data, not a brief.
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.