Already stressed coral reefs in the USVI have suffered through another coral bleaching event, surpassed only by the catastrophic 2005 bleaching event.

Youth Ocean Explorers from St. Thomas had the rare opportunity to participate in the National Park Service's Sea Turtle Monitoring Program on Buck Island Reef National Monument in St. Croix.

“We are really concerned about sea grasses declining  all over the globe, actually disappearing,” says Edwin Cruz-Rivera, associate professor of biology at the University of the Virgin Islands and recipient of a NSF Track 4 grant.

Groupers, and a wide variety of other reef fish such as snappers, triggerfish and grunts, migrate long distances from their home sites to certain locations for spawning events which take place in large groups, or aggregations.