UNC scientist John Bruno working with Galapagos coral monitoring team

John Bruno, a UNC-Chapel Hill marine scientist and faculty at the Center for Galapagos Studies, worked this summer with Universidad de San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) colleague Judith Denkinger and officials at the Galapagos National Park to establish a coral monitoring program in the Galapagos Islands.

The work this summer was a first step of a planned long-term program to study the effects of global warming and El Niño conditions on coral health and growth.

The monitoring site is at Punta Pitt, on the very northeastern corner of Isla San Cristobal, the easternmost island in the Galapagos archipelago.  The work this summer included three trips to identify and photograph coral colonies at Punta Pitt and to install a datalogger to record water temperature readings.

Lindsey Carr, a biology graduate student at Chapel Hill, also assisted with the project.

More information can be found at the Galapagos National Park website (Spanish): http://www.galapagospark.org/boletin.php?noticia=317.

Update:  El Comercio newspaper published a story (Spanish) about the work on September 23.  (A Google English translation of the story is available here.)