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In the waters of the Florida Keys, just above the ocean floor, a young woman raises a hammer and strikes the head of a steel bar. The force of the blow drives her backward. She struggles to regain her position and strikes again. And again. Finally, she\u2019s satisfied that it\u2019s securely in place, holding down a PVC frame on the ocean floor. However, there are at least 40 more steel bars to slam home before she and her team can call it a day.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA<\/b><\/p>\n In so many ways, it\u2019s a long journey from the foothills of the Appalachians to the seas of southern Florida. L-R: Sara Rolfe, Kylie Smith, Michael Childress FROM HERE TO THERE AND BACK AGAIN<\/b><\/p>\n Marine biologists don\u2019t always end up living near the ocean. Michael Childress spent part of his career at Idaho State University, about a four-day drive from the Florida Keys. “This invaluable natural resource has been in precipitous decline for the past 30 years. Marine biologists consider these reefs to be the most critically imperiled ecosystem on the planet.”<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Over the past 15-plus years, Childress and his students have managed to make dozens of trips to the Keys to study spiny lobsters, blue crabs and anemone shrimp. They\u2019ve helped finance these trips by doing everything from using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Sea Grant awards to holding bake sales.
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\nKylie Smith has made the trek many times and knows the way all too well. She has been donning scuba equipment and plunging into the salt water of the Florida Keys for the past six years as she completed her master\u2019s degree and is now finishing the research for her Ph.D. She has spent hundreds of hours studying the exotic creatures that inhabit coral reefs, measuring fish abundance, testing water quality and acidification levels, and also transplanting fragments of coral and recording their rates of survival and growth. Her experiences have changed her \u2014 as a scientist and as a person.
\nCoral reefs represent some of our oldest and most diverse ecosystems. They cleanse the oceans and provide habitat and food to more than one million species. They even help protect shorelines from erosion by lessening wave height and force. But this invaluable natural resource has been in precipitous decline for the past 30 years. Marine biologists consider these reefs to be the most critically imperiled ecosystem on the planet. There are a variety of reasons, but the chief culprit is believed to be multiple stresses associated with climate change. Corals thrive in a narrow temperature range, about 75-86 degrees Fahrenheit. When water temperatures rise above 86 degrees for extended periods, corals become more susceptible to disease, competition, predation and mortality.
\nThis decline has not gone unnoticed. In the Florida Keys and elsewhere, several organizations are transplanting coral fragments by the tens of thousands in hopes of restoring existing reefs and creating new ones. But most of the transplants fare poorly, simply because what is causing them to deteriorate remains insidiously in place.
\nDuring her time underwater, Smith has grown to love the corals. But after watching them suffer, she is more determined than ever to find ways to turn the tide. Her research has become not just a career goal, but a life\u2019s calling.
\n\u201cYour blood, sweat and tears go into these projects. It becomes a personal thing, because you\u2019re spending all your time returning to the same sites and watching something that you love wither and die,\u201d she says. \u201cBut sometimes you find something unexpected that gives you hope, and it restores your motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nand Sydney Whitaker discuss coral samples.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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\nBut before his stint at Idaho State, Childress began doing underwater research in the Keys in 1991 when he was a graduate student at Florida State University. That\u2019s when his passion for this wondrous string of tropical islands first consumed him. Childress knew that he didn\u2019t want to stay in Idaho forever, so when a faculty position became available at Clemson, he was quick to take it. Tigertown isn\u2019t exactly a stone\u2019s throw from the Conch Republic, but it\u2019s a whole lot closer than a state famous for its potatoes.
\nAn evolutionary behavioral ecologist whose research focuses on understanding how marine animals respond to habitat loss, Childress joined Clemson in 2001 and is now an asscoiate professor in biological sciences. Two of his main courses \u2014 Marine Ecology and Behavioral Ecology \u2014 are thriving despite the University\u2019s relative lack of resources dedicated to marine science. In addition, he teaches a Creative Inquiry undergraduate research course on the Conservation of Marine Resources.<\/p>\n\n
\nSmith began working with Childress in 2010. After earning her bachelor\u2019s in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, she came to Clemson first as a research assistant and then as a master\u2019s student. When Childress and Smith began to discuss her research options, Smith mentioned that she was interested in studying corals.
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t work on corals,\u201d Childress recalls. \u201cSo, when Kylie said that she wanted to do a project about corals, I told her that, at least at first, it would have to be related to some aspect of animal behavior. Because that\u2019s what my lab at Clemson does. Eventually, we decided that Kylie would begin by studying the effects of parrotfish populations on the health of coral reefs.\u201d
\nParrotfish are herbivores, and one of their favorite foods is macroalgae that compete with coral for nutrients and space. Smith\u2019s initial research tested the hypothesis that coral decline was due to harmful macroalgae growing out of control due to a loss of reef herbivores. But she found no strong evidence that coral was being inhibited by macroalgae overgrowth or being rescued by parrotfish eating it. This became the subject of her master\u2019s thesis, which she defended in 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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