Back a bounded stretch of reef water. Find out what actually happened in it.

Choosing what you support

The zone is the water inside the edge. A unit is one square of it, for one program, for one period.

Selection happens here. A supporter picks water on this site and sends support for exactly that water. What comes back afterward is the record for the zone that water sits in — the change recorded across it, with its uncertainty stated and with unmonitored stretches shown as unmonitored. The support is bounded to the square. The outcome is reported no finer than the zone, because the work covers a footprint wider than one square and treated water moves. Readings from the square itself are a separate thing and a sponsor can see those; an improvement credited to that square is a claim nobody can stand behind.

A program zone is a piece of water with an edge drawn around it, and inside that edge a provider has undertaken to make the water better — a lagoon, a fore-reef, the fringing shelf in front of one town. The zone is cut into squares on a grid that does not move, and a unit is one of those squares for one period of one program. All three coordinates are required. The same square next period is a different unit, and the same square under a second program working over it in the same period is a different unit again. A period is a month to start with. Support one, or a run of them along the crest where the heat does its worst work; either way the support sits on those units and nothing wider, which is the whole reason the edge comes first. It stops a bounded piece of work being described six months later as help for an ocean.

One unit, one supporter, and nothing anyone can take

A unit carries exactly one sponsor. Buy it and it is yours for that period — no share of it sold to somebody else, no second name added alongside yours, and no sum of money that moves you off it. There is nothing to take, so there is no bidding, no bid to beat and no incumbent to displace. The price is posted before you choose, it is the same for every square in that period, and it does not rise because two people want the same water. One rule sits on the total instead: a sponsorship is sent only once it reaches ten dollars, and a program may set that floor higher but never lower.

What that costs is finality, and this page is where you should hear it. A unit somebody else has bought is gone for that period, and no offer reopens it. That is the trade. An auction would keep it available to whoever paid most, and this deliberately does not.

Rank sits on the square, not on the unit

The comparative part of this is the square of water, and only the square. Every entity that has contributed to it is ordered by what those contributions were worth — across every program that has ever worked that water and every period any of them ran — measured in constant dollars. Where two entities come out equal on value, whoever was there first sits higher. Units are not ranked at all. A unit has one sponsor, and an ordering of one tells nobody anything.

Every contribution is re-expressed at one fixed reference month using the published consumer price index. A dollar given in the first year and a dollar given in the fifth are then compared on what each one could buy. Under rising prices the earlier dollar is the larger of the two, and it ranks above the later one. Equal purchasing power ranks equal on value. That index tracks consumer prices. What a hull costs to run is a different basket entirely, so the ordering is a fairer comparison than raw dollars and still an approximation of the thing being funded. Wherever a standing appears, both figures appear with it: the amount as given, and the constant-dollar basis the ordering runs on.

Rank cannot be taken from anyone either. Contributions are appended and never annulled, so the contribution behind an earlier position stays exactly where it was in the record, and a position moves when somebody gives more. One other thing can move it, and it belongs on this page. A contribution made before the index for its own month has published is valued on the last index published before it settled, and it is marked provisional until then. When its own month publishes, the value settles for good, and two entities sitting close together can cross at that point with neither of them having given anything. It happens once for a contribution and never again. Now the narrow reading, because every generous reading of it is wrong. No part of the reef changes hands. No claim arises over the water or anything living in it, and no deed is issued for anything. Nothing is repaid, nothing can be resold, and no rank pays a cent to whoever holds it.

Three ways to do more on water already spoken for

1. The same square, a later period Every period the program runs cuts a fresh unit over that exact water, and the next one along is usually unclaimed.
2. A different program over the same water More than one program can cover a square. Each cuts its own units, and each of those is separately available.
3. Give to the square itself A contribution can carry no program and no period at all. It counts toward that square's ordering like any other, and it funds the nearest viable program that can start soonest — which may not be that square, and the confirmation says so before any money moves.

The money clears today. The ordering moves at the next run.

Rank is re-certified on a scheduled run. Between runs a standing is whatever the last run produced, and a run rebuilds every ordering from the contribution record instead of patching the last one. So a contribution settling this afternoon may wait until the next run before it shows up in a position. The money clears without waiting, and the work it funds is funded from that moment.

Wherever a rank appears, the date it was certified appears beside it, in the same line of type and at the same size. It is never left off because the number reads better without it. A figure from an earlier run is worth having, as long as the reader is told how old it is.