Can you tell us a little more about the project?
My project is looking at determining the biodiversity present in Caribbean coral rubble beds and hopefully using that information to establish the function of these ecosystems.
Coral rubble beds form from dead coral skeletons that are created due to natural events, such as storms, or because of human influence, such as anchor damage and climate change. As ocean temperatures increase, corals are put under more stress and mortality will unfortunately also increase. The consequence of increased coral death will result in more coral rubble beds being created and cause existing rubble beds to increase in size. Despite being comprised of dead skeletons the ecosystem contains hundreds of marine animals, many of which we know very little about; some of which we don’t even know exist yet. It is therefore exceptionally important that we document the organisms that use the habitat before it is irreversibly changed by humans.
So many factors influence marine ecosystems: temperature, ocean currents, proximity to human settlements, water depth, nutrient presence, to name just a few. It is important when determining differences in diversity of organisms to understand as many of these factors as possible. I can control most of them by collecting data from my field sites whilst I am collecting my specimens. Ocean current patterns, however, are more complicated as they require additional specialised equipment. Understanding local currents is essential to determine the connectivity between patches of coral rubble. There is existing data on large-scale currents in the Caribbean region, but small-scale variances are not well documented. In order to collect that data for my specific field sites I needed to deploy a current meter in those locations – and that’s where Valeport came in!