Search

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Meet the Scientists in the Webcast from Belize

A scuba diver rests his elbow and leg on the sea floor next to a data logger tethered to a weight on the bottom.
Alex Lowe deploys data loggers near Booth Island, Antarctica, in 29-degree-Fahrenheit water. Photo courtesy of Alex Lowe.

Alex Lowe

Alex Lowe is a MarineGEO post-doctoral fellow with the Smithsonian. Alex knew he wanted to become a marine scientist when he went scuba diving for the first time in his home state of Utah. Alex's research is focused on water chemistry. He uses a special tool called a data logger — like a FitBit for the ocean — to record different measures of water chemistry in coastal-marine habitats, like coral reefs. This can help him understand what conditions the animals in coastal habitats experience — and if they are stressful or not.

Alex uses a special tool called a data logger — like a FitBit for the ocean — to record different measures of water chemistry in coastal-marine habitats, like coral reefs. Every minute, the data loggers collect information about the surrounding sea water, including temperature, salinity (how salty the water is), oxygen, and pH. Alex is particularly interested in the pH of the water, which is a measure of how basic or acidic a solution is. Scientists have proven that human activities, like burning fossil fuels, have caused the ocean's pH to change by adding carbon dioxide (CO2) to the oceans. People, like other animals, breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2. Plants do the opposite — they take in CO2 and breathe out oxygen. Plants and animals that live in the ocean can add or take CO2 from the water. Understanding this, Alex is investigating how the plants and animals in a particular habitat, like a coral reef, change the water chemistry, pH, of the water around it. By deploying data loggers in many different coastal habitats around the world, like in Belize, Washington state, Panama, Florida, and even Antarctica, Alex can better understand how the pH of different systems changes on an hourly and daily basis. This can help him understand what kind of conditions the animals in coastal habitats experience — and if they are stressful or not.

A scuba diver swims over a coral reef while holding some equipment.
Maggie Johnson doing research on a coral reef in Belize. Photo by Scott Ling, University of Tasmania.

Maggie Johnson

Maggie Johnson is a MarineGEO postdoctoral fellow with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, Florida. With MarineGEO, Maggie studies how coral reef structure and function over space and time. To study and quantify this, she uses standardized monitoring procedures, including permanent benthic surveys and Calcification Accretion Units (CAUs). She has implemented this approach at three MarineGEO sites (Bocas del Toro, Panama; Carrie Bow Cay, Belize; Indian River Lagoon, Florida) and in Coiba on the Pacific coast of Panama. 

A woman scuba diving near a coral reef while holding a clipboard and pole.
Leah Harper conducting research on a coral reef. Photo by Zach Foltz.

Leah Harper

Leah wanted to be a marine biologist as long as she can remember. As a kid, she wanted to study orcas, but her interests shifted to studying coral reefs after scuba diving for the first time on a Caribbean coral reef. Now, Leah is the central technician for the Smithsonian’s MarineGEO program, which means she travels to different locations around the world, surveying and studying the diversity of life in different nearshore habitats, including coral reefs. 

Leah is working on a research project that is focused on understanding coral disease in the Caribbean Sea. Currently, about one-third of coral species in the Caribbean Sea are being impacted by a contagious coral disease, which scientists first recorded in Florida in 2014. Leah and other MarineGEO scientists are studying how this disease spreads and what happens to corals when they get the disease. 

Leah and the MarineGEO team of scientists are studying how this Caribbean coral disease spreads. To study this, scientists “tag” healthy corals, they put a small marker near it, so that they can observe it over time. If the disease spreads to these corals, scientists will return to the tagged corals to collect tissue and mucus samples from whatever remains of the coral animal. They will analyze these samples to see if they can learn anything about which species of corals might have resistance to the disease, and which are more likely to get sick from it. 

Can you see diseased coral? Coral disease is easy to see because the disease causes corals to lose their tissue. Typically, a white band of bleached coral tissue is visible in a diseased coral. If the whole coral looks like a bright white skeleton, that means that the coral animal has died completely in that area of the colony. In most cases, the disease progresses and kills the whole colony.   

Is the coral disease in Belize? Leah visited the Smithsonian’s marine station in Belize, on Carrie Bow Cay, in June and didn’t see any diseased corals during her surveying work. Though, in June 2019, the disease was reportedly seen in the northern part of the country.  Leah will be monitoring the MarineGEO sites to keep track of coral health and fish diversity, while looking particularly for any signs of coral disease. 

Scuba diver holding a camera in front of him, photographing a coral reef
Scott Jones photographs a coral reef. Photo by Scott Ling, University of Tasmania.

Scott Jones

Scott Jones is the Coordinator for the Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystems Program, which is the long-term site dedicated to investigations for coral reefs and associated mangroves, seagrass meadows, and sandy bottoms nearby. The field operations are based at the Carrie Bow Cay Field Station on the Meso-American Barrier Reef in Belize. Part of Scott’s work is dedicated to organizing and participating in long-term monitoring and research projects on the coral reefs surrounding the field station. Each year, Scott monitors the same sites to keep track of coral health and fish diversity, through the MarineGEO program and Reef Life Survey. 

One of the important ways to track the health of coral reefs is to monitor the life that lives in and around a reef system. Through MarineGEO and Reef Life surveys, Scott, and a team of MarineGEO scientists, conduct standardized, visual surveys of reef biodiversity, recording the diversity and abundance of animal life in and around the coral reef system. The information gathered through these surveys is fed into a public database available to scientists around the world, helping to inform different types of research projects and contributing to a better understanding of coral reef life and health, globally.