Back to Belize

I arrived in Belize yesterday with three former lab members (Abel Valdivia from CBD, Courtney Cox from the Smithsonian, and Jenny Hughes, a recent graduate from UNC). Although field ecology is really fun (if pretty challenging) we are actually here to work. In 2008 my lab took over a reef monitoring program Melanie McField set up in the mid 1990s to track the state (AKA "health") of reefs along the Meso-American reef in Belize (we also work in Mexico and Honduras). Most years, we come down in May after classes are over to survey 16-19 sites from the north, just below the Mexican border, all the way down to the far-offsore cays near Honduras. The sites are all on fore reefs, between 35 and 45 feet, with our transects typically ending just above the drop-off at 6oish feet.  About half the sites are "protected" (to some degree, e.g., from fishing, etc.). The general purpose of the long-term project is to measure and understand changes in the reef ecosystem on [...]