My Research

Blue coral by Shannon Gore

The research for my final project is centered around the coral reefs of the British Virgin Islands. Specifically, I'm interested in how the coral reefs are being affected by pretty much anything going on around the islands. I've found out that the reefs are impacted by interaction with people, such as sailors, tourists, and fishermen, and hurricanes and climate change.

The last two surprised me, because I didn't expect them to be as intertwined as they were. Apparently, warmer than average ocean temperatures don't cause more hurricanes and tropical storms, but they do cause stronger storms. 2005 is a good example year, as Hurricane Katrina was an effect of those warm temperatures. Katrina didn't make it all the way down to the British Virgin Islands. Similar storms, though, can cause fragile pieces of coral to break off and cause piles of coral called coral rubble ridges or coral clast ridges on the many beaches on the islands.

However, research is a little frustrating sometimes. Since my topic is very scientific, most evidence I can find for my paper is written very professionally in scientific reports. I'm not a scientist or even planning to be one, so it can be a little hard to grasp when articles start going in depth about fish density numbers and median ocean temperatures and even more topics I can't even begin to describe. It's slow going, but there has been a lot of articles to work with that I can mostly understand, which I'm really grateful for.

The next path I'm going to take for discovering more research is finding more about human interaction with reefs and more about coral bleaching related to high temperatures around the British Virgin Islands, if it's available. I've already found out a lot about hurricanes and coral reefs, so I think more information about those two is my next best step.