Coral reefs are among the most valuable ecosystems in the world, providing food for coastal communities, shoreline protection through the attenuation of wave energy, habitat for commercially important fish species, recreational opportunities for residents and tourists, and cultural value, among other ecosystem services. Understanding the complex relationship between humans and coral reef ecosystems allows natural resource managers responsible for managing coral reefs to more holistically understand the key social and ecological impacts of their strategies. Humans play a significant role in ecosystem health (or lack thereof) through their interactions with coral reef resources. Therefore, including humans in the systematic monitoring of coral reefs is critical for understanding the interconnected nature of social and ecological systems.
One way that the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) monitors how coastal communities interact with coral reef ecosystems is through the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program, specifically, its socioeconomic pillar of research. Researchers at NCCOS within the Social Science Team play an important role in calculating the socioeconomic indicators developed to measure different aspects of social ecology in these coral reef jurisdictions.
The objective of this internship is to collect secondary data from NOAA Fisheries to ultimately calculate a socioeconomic indicator, which is used to estimate the amount of pressure on coral reefs from commercial fishing. The intern will search and download the relevant data, sort through it to determine reef specific fish caught from the fishery, and then calculate total revenue and total pounds caught for the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands and the United States Virgin Islands to be included within within a forthcoming report to be published by NCCOS and CRCP.