ISRS/CMC Coral Reef Fellowship Award Announcement

Steven Miller smiller at gate.net
Fri Mar 26 08:42:51 EST 1999


ISRS/CMC Coral Reef Fellowship Award Announcement

The International Society for Reef Studies (http://www.uncwil.edu/isrs)
and the Center for Marine Conservation (http://cmc-ocean.org/) announced
today that their 1999 Coral Reef Fellowship Award was made to Helen Fox,
University of California, Berkeley.  Ms. Fox will work in Indonesia’s
Komodo National Park where she will assess damage to coral reefs from
dynamite fishing, also known as “blast” fishing.  She will assess
factors that affect recovery of blast sites and she will develop methods
to help accelerate recovery of coral reefs damaged by this destructive
fishing practice.  It is well known that blast fishing causes widespread
and devastating damage to coral reefs.  Despite being illegal, blast
fishing is reported to cause significant reef degradation throughout the
South Pacific.    Specifically, Ms. Fox will: 1) evaluate how coral
cover at various spatial scales correlates with recruitment; 2)
determine how rubble produced at the blast sites affects coral
recruitment in various flow regimes; 3) manipulate substrate stability
and rugosity to evaluate their effects on coral recruitment rates; and
4) evaluate recovery based on changes in community composition among
blast sites of known age compared to nearby unblasted sites.  Komodo
National Park is located in eastern Indonesia and includes areas where
significant blast fishing previously occurred, but has declined
dramatically in recent years due to management efforts.  This is the
third ISRS/CMC Fellowship award, with previous winners working in Belize
and the Philippines.   The award is for one year and is worth US$14,000.



Dr. Terry Done (President, ISRS)
Australian Institute of Marine Science
PMB #3 Mail Centre,
Townsville Qld          4810
Australia
email: tdone at aims.gov.au

For information about the ISRS/CMC Fellowship contact:

Dr. Steven Miller (Recording Secretary, ISRS)
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
515 Caribbean Drive
Key Largo, Florida 33037




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