B.A.S. sponsors lecture on reef damage
As part of its monthly lecture series, tonight the Belize Audubon Society is hosting, “No teef the Reef,” a lecture and slide presentation on the health of Belize’s reefs by Marine Biologist Melanie McField. McField has been studying Belize’s reefs since 1990. When she compares her research to studies done in the seventies, things do not look good.
Melanie McField, Marine Biologist
“The patch reefs on Glover’s Reef, in the seventies, had eighty percent live coral cover and now it’s down below twenty percent. And we saw a twenty-five percent reduction from September ’98 to September ’99 or a little over twenty-five percent and that was mainly the bleaching event. So we are in a time right now that’s crucial.
If we can minimize those things and keep our local environment as clean and as pristine as possible, then when these large scale global problems, like hurricanes, wipe through our reefs we’ll have a better chance for recovery.
We need fisheries reserves to have replenishment areas, not only for the fisheries aspect of it but also for the ecological, maintaining the balance of the reef system. I’m working with these organizations and hopefully the data will be useful in providing the answers to what efforts are working and what we need more work on.”
The lecture starts at seven thirty p.m. at the Belize Marine Terminal and Museum. McField is pursuing her Doctorate in the Department of Marine Science at the University of South Florida.
