Students strive to preserve the coral reefs

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The San Diego ARKs Project is led by Jason Baer, an SDSU Ph.D. candidate, who has worked in the Caribbean and San Diego to study the impacts of the arks.

“My passion for coral reefs comes from personal amazement,” said Baer. “The more you learn about them you realize that not that many people know how much of an economic and cultural value they have around the world.”

Over the last 25 years, half of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed or depleted. This project aims to reverse these damages.

“There are very few environments that are degrading that fast and it is pretty sad to watch,” said Baer. “It is much easier to break something than it is to build it back up.”

Conor Kennedy, a SDSU senior studying International Security and Conflict Resolution (ISCOR) with an emphasis on the environment, said he believes this project is important for students at SDSU who are interested in the environment.

“If SDSU wasn’t doing things like this maybe I wouldn’t have an emphasis on the environment,”  Kennedy said.”It’s inspirational to see that doing things here can lead to something in the real world.”

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