Coral bleaching is a characteristic whitening of the coral surface caused by several stressors, e.g., changes in light, salinity levels, or nutrients. The leading cause of coral bleaching is rising ocean temperature due to climate change.

Auditory display of data (or sonification) is the sound equivalent of data visualization. In other words, non-speech audio is used to convey information, represent phenomena, or elicit aesthetic experiences.

Reef Elegy is an auditory display of coral bleaching data collected during 78 days in 2019 by the Hawaii Coral Bleaching Collective (HCBC) around several coral reef locations in Hawaii and comprising 517 clustered observations. The data fields that were used for the auditory display are the geographical coordinates (with the bounding box remapped to a spherical sound field), depth, coral population mean bleach percentage, and photosynthetic active radiation.

In Reef Elegy, there are two main sound components for each cluster. One is an indicator of healthy coral reefs (the crackling sound of snapping shrimp), while the other is associated with degraded ones (the hiss and pings generated during algae coral cover's photosynthesis). The sonification uses parameter mapping techniques and 3rd orded ambisonics, with the final output decoded to binaural format (wear headphones please!).