Aesthetically-pleasing reefs are healthy reefs.
Computers recognize features that humans perceive as aesthetic.
High color intensity and diversity.
Highly textured.
These features are good indicators of coral reef health.
High microbial diversity.
Few discernable high order objects.
Haas AF, Guibert M, Foerschner A, Co T, Calhoun S, George E, Hatay M, Dinsdale E, Sandin SA, Smith JE, Vermeij MJA, Felts B, Dustan P, Salamon P, Rohwer F. (2015) Can we measure beauty? Computational evaluation of coral reef aesthetics. PeerJ 3:e1390
https://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1390
This companion repository to both sensiphi and https://peerj.com/articles/1390/ contains the required Matlab code.