Over the course of these two weeks each classmate has worked on a research project with a group and presented an article they used in their research. Today I learned how well artificial reefs are doing. I used to think only real reefs would hold a lot of biodiversity, but one of the groups showed us data that supported artificial reefs had more species and more fish than a regular reef. Another important fact I learned from one of the groups was that chronic oil spills impact the ecosystem more severely than major oil spills. Chronic oil spills are spills that occur daily from factories dumping waste in the ocean and ship spillage. The chronic oil spills are worse because there isn’t any media coverage of them so there is little effort to help, and it’s also a daily. I learned how ecotourism promotes a safe way to view the environment, but it actually can very detrimental to the environment. I also learned about invasive species and how can they can take the whole ecosystem out of balance.
