“This has definitely made me realize how much preparation there is. You can’t just jump in the ocean and start counting fish. You have to read the literature first, make a dive plan, go through permitting — it’s a process and a commitment.”

Research fellow: Christine Gardiner
Hometown: Houston, TX
School: University of Rhode Island
Major: Marine Biology
Mentor: Graham Forrester
Project: Do food web changes explain population declines of coral reef fishes?

One key perk of Christine Gardiner’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) with Professor Graham Forrester is spending the month of July diving and researching coral reef fish in the British Virgin Islands.

Another benefit for the born and raised southerner has been to experience her first summer in the Ocean State.

But mainly, says Gardiner, a senior, the project seeking to isolate causes of long-term change in the abundance of small reef fishes offers the chance to explore educational and career options.

“Honestly,” she says, “I’m still not sure what I want to do. I’ve worked on different research projects — mangrove studies, coral studies, and now this new fish study.”

“I’m just trying different things,” she explains, having helped out in labs since her freshman year and gained familiarity with Forrester’s work. He recommended she apply for the Rhode Island EPSCoR program.

For her fellowship, Gardiner is looking at the behavioral ecology of goby fish, a small bottom dweller that seeks refuge in rock or coral crevices to escape predators. The scientists seek to gain a better understanding of how the gobies react to other fish under their environmental circumstances and what is leading to their higher mortality rates.

“The theory is that all of the big predators are being overfished, so the medium-size fish are in greater abundance, thus increasing their feeding rates on the gobies,” she says. “The project looks at the number of rock refuges versus the number of gobies present versus the number of predators.”

Climate change and coral reef decline could provide another contributing factor, since coral reefs offer the gobies a refuge option as well.

Based on Guana Island in the BVI, Gardiner says her duties include diving every day, and observing goby behavior under a matrix of different conditions — high, medium, and low refuge availability versus high, medium, and low densities of gobies present. The scientists will create a gradient of refuges out of rocks and place different concentrations of gobies throughout these habitats to observe the their reaction to predators, what they eat, and how the gobies interact with each other. Gardiner also will help track the parasitic worms that live in the gobies’ gills, causing them to be weak and increasing their vulnerability to predation.

To participate in the project, Gardiner says she had to obtain her research diving certification, study the literature, and get details organized for the trip abroad:

“This has definitely made me realize how much preparation there is. You can’t just jump in the ocean and start counting fish. You have to read the literature first, make a dive plan, go through permitting — it’s a process and a commitment. You definitely need to build relationships with other people.”

The daughter of two scientists — a geologist and chemical oceanographer — is confident about her chosen field, although exactly what she will end up doing remains undetermined. She says she has been exposed to science her whole life and has fond, early memories of her father sharing his rock collection with her elementary school classes.

At the moment, Gardiner says, “My plan is to go to graduate school after this. I like thinking about problems in our environment and how to solve them.”

Story and photo by Amy Dunkle