NEWS
Grand Cayman Reef Lecture: Impacts of the 2023 marine heatwave and the changing face of Little Cayman coral reefs
The Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI) will wrap up the 2024 Reef Lecture series with “Impacts of the 2023 marine heatwave and the changing face of Little Cayman coral reefs” by CCMI’s Director of Research, Dr Gretchen Goodbody-Gringley. We invite members of the public to join us for this FREE event. Seating is limited; advance registration is requested.
DATE: Wednesday, 6th November
TIME: 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm
LOCATION: Ambassadors of the Environment, The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman
About the topic:
Dr Gretchen Goodbody-Gringley will update the community on the changes in reef health on Little Cayman following the mass bleaching event and super marine heatwave of 2023.
Since 1999, teams of reef scientists at CCMI have assessed coral, benthic, and fish communities at reef sites across Little Cayman using the standardized Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment (AGRRA) protocol. AGRRA examines multiple indicators of the benthic-coral-fish relationships. These data provide valuable baseline information for managers and government officials responsible for protecting coral reefs. Join us at Ambassadors of the Environment at 6pm on the 6th November for an update from the CCMI research team.
This is a FREE event thanks to our Healthy Reefs Sponsors for 2024: Foster’s Supermarket, Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, and Knighthead Annuity. Many thanks to the ambassadors of the Environment for hosting this event.
About the speaker:
Dr. Gretchen Goodbody-Gringley, CCMI’s Director of Research and Education, has been with CCMI since January 2020. Prior to that, Dr. Goodbody-Gringley was an Assistant Scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) where she led the Reef Ecology and Evolution Laboratory.
She completed her BSc at the University of Georgia and her Ph.D. at Harvard University in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. She then held postdoctoral positions at Mote Marine Laboratory and University of Bologna, Italy. Dr Goodbody-Gringley has a broad background in benthic marine ecology and is particularly interested in the evolution of life history strategies and how that in turn serves to structure population dynamics and maintain genetic diversity.
Her research focuses on population structure, reproductive ecology, and genetic connectivity of a variety of organisms that inhabit tropical coral reef ecosystems ranging from inshore shallow reefs down to the mesophotic zone, with the goal of understanding how ecosystems function in order to maintain biodiversity.