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Suzanne Arnold on a dive near Palmyra Atoll, where she studied new and surviving corals growing on terra-cotta settlement plates anchored into coral rock, like the one in the foreground.

Recovery Research

In a world in which climate change, pollution and overfishing are stressing reefs, an understanding of how new corals get started is essential to reef recovery.

That's the focus of research by University of Maine Ph.D. student Suzanne Arnold, whose work takes her to the healthy reefs of the Indo-Pacific and decimated sites in the Caribbean looking for answers.

"Caribbean reefs are in jeopardy and not recovering the way reefs are in the Indo-Pacific," says Arnold, whose doctoral research is in marine biology. "I'm trying to understand the processes through which reefs recover in an effort to help reef managers in the Caribbean."

Originally from Falmouth, Mass., Arnold received dual master's degrees from UMaine in marine policy and marine biology in 2007. In her research, she collaborates with one of the leading authorities on the ecology of coral reefs in the Caribbean, UMaine marine scientist Robert Steneck.

Arnold studies the establishment and survivorship of baby corals relative to their local surroundings.

In her master's work, she monitored the growth of new corals every three or four months on the reefs of Bonaire, a relatively healthy site in the Caribbean. The young corals are growing on terra-cotta settlement plates, tiles the researchers attached to the dead calcium carbonate reef skeleton. Species she's been tracking in the Caribbean for four years grow less than a centimeter annually.

Arnold found extremely low survival rates among the new corals due to overgrowth of algae and sponges. Essentially, the corals are being outcompeted for space. One of the main causes of algal overgrowth is overfishing, particularly of herbivorous fish.