Protecting the Belize Barrier Reef:
What is the Role of Science?

The Belize barrier reef, the second longest in the world, runs in a ribbon from the tip of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula southward some 180 miles into the Gulf of Honduras. Over 35 species of reef-building corals thrive in its sun-drenched waters, sheltering the coastline against erosion and providing sustenance and refuge for manatees, porpoises, turtles, sharks, butterflyfish, and a host of other marine organisms. Belize's barrier reef ecosystem--its reef, cays, grass flats, and mangrove swamps--is truly a global treasure, and the commitment of the Belizean people to protect it is strong. Nevertheless, the Belize barrier reef, like coral reefs throughout much of the Caribbean and Pacific, is grossly overused and abused. Ever increasing numbers of people cause exponentially increasing exploitation and destruction of reefs. Sustainability of this resource is ultimately a function of numbers of people--and nothing any scientist may say or do can change this fact. Organizing and raising political and social consciousness about the limits of reef sustainability and devising viable economic alternatives are what conservation organizations are all about, and for that purpose science quite properly plays a minor role. But if the conservation community is somehow successful in gaining commitments to change reef use, then society does need science--strictly applied science, to be sure to help guide and give flexibility to new approaches to coral reef conservation and management.

Jacque Carter, an associate professor of biology and chair of the Department of Life Sciences at the University of New England, has had a long and extensive involvement with Belize and its barrier reef. As a child growing up in a small town amid the corn fields of Northern Illinois, he set up dozens of aquariums in his bedroom, kept channel catfish in his bathtub, and even raised a South American cayman inthe dining room, much to the chagrin of his parents. His interests turned professional when, years later, as an undergraduate at northern Illinois University, he went to Belize for a field course in tropical ecology. Jacque enjoyed the experience so much, he says, that he decided then and there to become an ichthyologiest. After receiving his Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary's School of Marine Science, Dr. Carter returned to belize, where he spent almost three years studying courtship behavior and sex change in Nassau grouper. Jacque also helped to establish the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, the first nationally protected underwater coral reef park in Belize. In the field, he continues to study the effects of commercial fishing on coral reef fish communities off the coast of Belize. "In heavily fished areas," Dr. Carter reports, "we've found an absence of large predatory fish. As a result, there is a shift in the balance or equilibrium of the fish community." One goal of his current research, he says, "is to determine the ecological consequences of this imbalance."

For his recent sabbatical leave, Jacque took his family to Belize, where they spent the year like the Swiss Family Robinson on Middle Cay, a tiny palm covered island perched at the southern end of Glovers Reef Atoll in the western Caribbean sea. During this time, Jacque continued to investigate the sex lives of coral reef fishes, established a scientific field research station and laboratory on the island, and worked closely with the government of Belize to create another underwater park, the Glovers Reef Atoll Marine Reserve. In addition to his responsibilities at the University of New England, Dr. Carter is a research conservation fellow with the Wildlife Conservation Society (formerly the New York Zoological Society.) He has published numerous articles in national and international journals, serves on editorial review boards, has delivered several invited lectures on the topic of coral reef ecology and conservation, and is currently at work on a book entitled, The Coral Reef and Coastal Fishes of Belize.