Courtney Cox – forensic fisheries sleuth

While researching the health of coral reefs and the fate of the parrotfish, Carolina grad student Courtney Cox uncovered a conspiracy at Belize fish markets and restaurants. Mark Derewicz covered the fishy mystery here in Endevors magazine:

Let’s face it. A lot of fish fillets look the same and taste the same. But when you buy, say, snapper fillets from the local market, you probably assume that they’re indeed snapper. Don’t feel so confident. At least not in Belize.

Carolina graduate student Courtney Cox was in Belize, a tiny Central American nation with a strong fishing industry, to study the fate of parrotfish species. In May 2009 the Belize government banned fishing for parrotfish. “This was an extremely progressive move by Belize,” Cox says. “It’s one of the only countries in the world to do this kind of thing.” What Belize did was crucial, she says, because there’s been a decline in coral health throughout the entire Caribbean, including in the Belize Barrier Reef. Parrotfish are key species on the reef; they help keep it healthy…    Read it all here