The government of the Virgin Islands has agreed to consider strategies to better protect its surrounding coral reefs. “It puts us on the hook for taking a serious look, and it puts them on the hook for helping us achieve it,” said Bill Rohring, associate director of Coastal Zone Management, the Virgin Islands Daily News reported. During a conference on St. Thomas scientists described the reefs as “in crisis" due to high water temperatures, pollution, erosion and disease. Runoff and sedimentation around the islands is part of the problem, the experts said, according to the Daily News. A reef researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey lamented that on St. John, “Every couple of days there’s a new driveway cut, a new unpaved road."
Caroline Rogers said, "There’s a lot we don’t know, but we know what happens when we pout a bunch of dirt on top of a reef,” the News reported.