Results

Water temperature did not vary much between the sites. The wave action was found to be very high at North Rock, low in front of the rock at Whalebone bay, medium behind the rock at the same site, very low at Causeway beach, and high at John Smith's bay.

Through a test of ANOVA, percentage of each coral that is affected by BBD is significantly different between each site (F= 11.17, P>1.73*10^-5) (figure 1). A further analysis called Tukey-Kramer HSD multiple comparisons found that John Smith's bay is similar to North Rock in the percentage that is affected with black band disease (table 1). John Smith's is not similar to Whalebone or Causeway beach. North Rock is similar to John Smith's and Whalebone but not Causeway. Whalebone has similar values to North Rock and Causeway beach but not to John Smith's. Finally, the Causeway beach is similar to Whalebone bay only. Taking out North Rock, since it did not have a standard method for collecting data, John Smith's was found to have no similarities with the other sites. Whalebone and Causeway had similar percentages (table2).

Figure 1: This shows the percentages of dead coral at

each site with error bars. (CW=causeway, JS=John Smith's,

NR= North Rock, WB= Whalebone)

John Smith's	A
North Rock	A	B
Whalebone		B	C
Causeway			C

table 1:This table shows which sites are similar
to each other using letters A, B, and C.

John Smith's	A
Whalebone		B
Causeway		B

table 2:This is similar to the other table but it does not include
North Rock since the methods used there was different.

A t-test found no correlation between the intensity of wave action and the amount of BBD found at the sites (t= 2.57, P>0.082) or the presence of active BBD and wave action (t=2.57, P>0.38). Water temperature does not affect the presence of BBD at these sites either (t=2.57, P>0.49). A regression test shows a postive correlation between percent of dead coral and type of wave action (y=12.498x-20.098; R^2=0.8758) but it is not significant according to the t-test (figure 2).

Figure 2: This figure gives the regression of the percent of dead coral area found versus the type of wave action (1= very low, 2 = low, 3 = medium, 4 = high, 5 = very high).