About This Project

San Salvador is a remote Bahamian island with limited local anthropogenic impacts to coral reef ecosystems, resulting in near pristine reef communities. However, due to the growing tourist facilities on San Salvador, the future of these reef communities may have a different outlook. Our goals are to discover how these reef communities have changed in the past 17 years, identify the primary influencing factors to these communities, and increase our knowledge of these essential ecosystems.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Coral patch reef communities worldwide are showing a general pattern of decline and degradation due to a number of factors, including stress related mortality, diseases, and subsequent algal overgrowth. Caribbean reefs are among the most heavily impacted but San Salvador coral communities have shown remarkable resilience to adverse influences that have plagued numerous Caribbean reefs. The resilience may be related to San Salvador's location. It is a relatively remote Bahamian island, with low resident population and limited tourism. The tourism is increasing and this may further impact the reef communities. The last published assessment of these reefs was in 1998. My study will compare the state of reefs now with that previous work. The comparison will show degradation or improved health.

What is the significance of this project?

Coral reef communities can be regulated by either top-down (nutrients) or bottom-up (overfishing) processes. San Salvador has been repeatedly described as having "excellent water quality." Therefore, I hypothesize that fish populations are influencing San Salvador coral and algae reef communities, in a top-down process. The research will illustrate the degradation or recovery of San Salvador reef communities and whether or not changes in reef health are correlated with changes in the fish community.

Coral reefs are crucial ecosystems to sustaining island populations, as a food source for local fishermen and economically as area eco-tourism. Increasing our understanding of these reef communities will allow for better management and monitoring of these essential ecosystems.

What are the goals of the project?

Researchers will travel to the Gerace Research Centre on San Salvador, Bahamas to collect coral, algae, and fish community data via scuba diving. The data collected from five patch reefs will be compared to data collected from 1998 on the same reefs, and analysis of data will give researchers greater insight to community dynamics of these patch reef communities.

A goal of this research is to create baseline of reef community data that could continually be monitored by the many researchers or university students to track the trajectory of these patch reefs.

At a time when these essential coral reefs ecosystems are being adversely impacted by numerous factors, research identifying primary influencing factors on these reefs will help future recovery.