Friday

This is my last blog from San Salvador Island. Tomorrow morning I will pack, get in a plane and return to Virginia. Thursday afternoon we collected data from a site on the northern side of the island called Rice Bay. Rice Bay was very rough and the water tossed us around like corks while we attempted to count species under the intersections of our P-I (point-intercept) frames. We found thousands of algae plants and less than 50 coral plants under the intersections of the P-I frames. This means that the reef is not healthy; the algae out competes the coral for nutrition and if the situation does not change the reef might die. I am saddened to know that the many reefs around San Salvador are in trouble and are not as healthy as they were just 10 years ago. I am saddened and I wonder what we might be able to do to help the reefs become healthy again. Do you have any ideas about what we can do to help the reefs become healthy again?