‘Adventures in Chagos,’ posted in the Scripps Institution Coral Reef Ecology blog, was written by Samantha Clements, a science team member on the Living Oceans Foundation’s BIOT Mission earlier this year.
Adventures in Chagos
Coral Reef Ecology Blog of Smith Lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography
June 1, 2015
By Samantha Clements
This year, during the months of March and April, I conducted coral reef benthic surveys for the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) in Chagos. Chagos is the largest archipelago in the world and lies within the British Indian Ocean Territory. The islands of the archipelago are very far from any continents and have been uninhabited and protected since the 1970’s, and therefore provide a unique environment, free of local human impacts, to study coral reefs and the faunal communities they support.
Since Chagos is protected from fishing, fish from all trophic levels, from herbivores to planktivores and predators, are able to thrive in large numbers. Additionally, they often grow to be much larger than similar species in areas where fishing is allowed…
