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sofia > academy of environmental science and technology > science fair
Academy of Environmental Science and Technology Forest Hill Community High School
Palm Beach County Science Fair Projects
Do Fish Prefer Natural or Artificial Reefs?
Mara Young and Lorraine Douglas
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The purpose of this project is to compare species diversity and abundance on natural and artificial reefs on Florida’s east coast. Select artificial and natural reefs were chosen including: Breakers reef and Pauls reef (natural), Play Pens Tri County reef and Rock Piles reef (artificial). These reefs were chosen because of their same or similar depth, size and location, allowing Pauls reef to be compared to Rock Piles reef (Comparison #A) and Breakers reef compared to Play Pens Tri County (Comparison #B). Data were obtained from the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) Fish Survey Project. The volunteer fish-monitoring program allows us to compare the number of species and sighting frequencies at both the natural and artificial reefs. For comparison #A the natural reef results for species sighting frequency were slightly higher than the artificial while for Comparison #B the species sighting frequency results were much higher for the natural than the artificial reef. Our #A data show that the artificial reef had 115 species and the natural had 136 species. For #B we found that the natural reef had 183 fish species and artificial had 99 species. We concluded that our hypothesis of the natural reefs having higher fish sighting frequency and species abundance was correct. We believe that this is so because the cycle of the nutrients that are produced by coral reef organisms supports a larger food chain.
For More Information:
Sasha Linsin
Forest Hill Community High School
690l Parker Avenue, West Palm Beach, Florida 33405
(561) 540-2493
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