Coral reefs worldwide are threatened by a variety of human impacts. Fishing is among the most pressing threats to reefs, because it occurs on most reef systems and fundamentally alters food webs. Meanwhile, observing coral reefs, particularly remote, hard-to-access locations such as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), remains notoriously difficult and expensive. But a University of Hawai’i (UH) at Mānoa researcher and her collaborators may have found a mysterious natural phenomenon that can help us observe coral reef health from space.