Today several people presented their topics and reviewed their chosen research articles in front of the class.
– Ecotourism in Trinidad is positively viewed by the people and is thought to help the animals. They believe that they are protecting them from people who are trying to hunt them when really the very presence of the people themselves are causing the natural habitat of some of the animals to be tarnished.
– Invasion of alien fish species put other fishes in their natural habitat in danger because when they feed it throws off the food chain and the way of life of the local animals in that area that depend on each other whether the be coral or predators. An example of this would be lionfish. Lionfish have been appearing at places like the Caribbean for a few years now and they are changing the way the animals in the are live naturally because the cycle that they were once in did not take in account this foreign fish that really shouldn’t even be in these areas.
– Oil spills kill many birds each year. Undocumented oil spills, like most of those that occur along the coast of Canada are even worse for these fish because they receive less publicity. With less publicity, less people know about these problems and help that otherwise could’ve been provided and continuous oil spills like this make life even harder on the animals. Especially continuous oil spills like this that take a long time to clear up because it’s no polar and cannot be mixed or dissolved in the water.
– Artificial coral reefs can serve as a life-saving proxy for some fishes that live in reefs along the coast. Artificial reefs are most commonly used when coral reefs are plagued with disease or are dying from other causes and the animals need a substitute for shelter and food. Artificial reefs can be formed by filled tires that have been sunk the the bottom of the water and have strategically placed coral and other organisms that help them flourish quickly. In most cases the artificial reefs grow exponentially and very healthily and become natural reefs that last much much longer than expected, even though they are only meant to be used until the other one can recover. These are very helpful and important things in places like the Virgin Islands that have coral that is damaged by hurricanes constantly.
