Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Alcock, Frank

Keywords

Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Marine Resources, Coral Reefs, Biodiversity

Area of Concentration

Environmental Science

Abstract

This thesis assesses the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in both its political and ecological context. Throughout the past centuries Marine Protected Areas have been used to regulate and manage marine resources and their consumptive uses. Over this time coral reefs have been heavily impacted by human activities. More recently, since the 1950’s, scientists and the public have noticed the degrading quality of the ocean environments and have since utilized MPAs to manage and conserve coral reefs and the fish that live in them. In the United States the National Marine Sanctuaries Act has created thousands of square nautical miles of protected ocean. One of the Sanctuaries created through this act, the FKNMS is the focus of this thesis. Considered to be one of the more successful MPAs in the world, it also has many problems that have affected its effectiveness at protecting the economy of the Florida Keys and its unique ecological structures. I tested the difference in fish abundance and biodiversity in two different reefs in the FKNMS that have differing regulations. While one reef is a strict no-take zone, the other allowed for catch and release fishing. The hypothesis presented in this paper suggests that the allowance of catch and release fishing lowers the abundance and biodiversity of fish, and thus the health of the reef. The results of my statistical tests showed that there was a significant difference between the abundance of fish in the two reefs, but no statistical difference between the biodiversity.

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