As a senior Honors student
majoring in marine biology, Sherri Huelster might seem mismatched for her work
as a research assistant to Dr. Robert Kerstein, chair and professor of
government and world affairs.
But in the realm
of advanced research, whether in graduate school or undergraduate Honors, worlds
often collide with positive results. And as it turns out, she is more a
colleague than an assistant.“It was a proposed
plan that I was hoping to work this summer with a biology professor,” she says,
“but I went along with an Honors research fellowship. I’ve been looking at the
Florida Keys and the different environmental policies and regulations that had
been put into place as early as 1901, 1903 with Teddy Roosevelt, and going
through the National Marine Sanctuary, examining the impacts on local politics,
ecology, economics that make up the Florida Keys, that they live
by.”
Competitive
ResearchThrough a rigorous
pursuit of academic journals, scientific journals, peer-reviewed journals,
environmental regulations, history books and newspaper articles, Huelster has
amassed an impressive body of information on what has happened to the Keys in
the past century or so, and what public reaction has been to those
changes.“I had to get
human initial influences of the French discovery to the pipeline from Miami to
Key West, the railroad, the Overseas Highway.”That information is converging to form something of
a socio-environmental history of the enchanting string of islands that skirt the
southern tip of the Sunshine State in a gently sweeping arc that touches the
Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.That’s perfect for Kerstein, who is busy at work on
his next book about Florida.“I’m going to be
able to draw on some of Sherri’s research for a book I’m writing on Key West
that primarily focuses on the evolution of Key West as a tourist destination,
primarily since the ’70s. But of course, it started decades earlier.“When you look at tourism,” he says, “among the
things you look at are the impacts of tourism, the environmental impacts. That
certainly overlaps the work that Sherri’s been doing.”That research is something Huelster takes very
seriously.“It was
competitive,” Huelster says of obtaining the fellowship. “Only five individuals
were granted this research for the 2003-2004 school year.”Near the conclusion of the academic year, at the end
of April, each fellowship recipient must deliver a speech. In the fall semester,
Huelster began with researching and writing the paper. This semester, her task
involves funneling the fruits of her labors into a 15-minute speech and Power
Point presentation.
A Matter of Cause and
EffectIn a relationship
that can get a bit confusing, the credit she earns will go toward her minor in
history.“I figured that,
since I knew a lot about the biology aspect, it would be more interesting to
look at how this happened,” she says of tourism’s impact on the Keys. “Because
every cause has an effect; every action, reaction.”
She stayed at UT over the summer, and began her research almost immediately,
in late May or early June. Drawing on information from about 70 sources filled
her summer with reading and digesting. Kerstein helped her with an annotated
bibliography, an outline and a “major rough draft.” After “major editing”
through subsequent drafts, Huelster says she is crafting and polishing her final
draft this semester.
Contributing to
her already whetted appetite was a dive trip to the Keys for the Coral Reefs
Honors course with Dr. Kevin Beach. The purpose of the trip was to get students
acquainted with each other and comfortable together as divers before the group’s
big trek, a two-week underwater excursion in Honduras.
“We got used to each other before two weeks in
another country,” she says with a little laugh, perhaps at the obvious logic, or
maybe at a vague inkling of what might have happened without that preparatory
step.
But getting to
know her classmates and soon-to-be travel mates better wasn’t all she gleaned
from the dress rehearsal.
“The dive shops
were very clear in telling people who went out snorkeling and scuba diving,
‘Don’t touch the reef. This is a protected environment, because that’s what
falls under sanctuary. You cannot touch. It’s a no-touch zone, basically. Don’t
touch anything, don’t try to take coral, don’t try to pick up sand
dollars.’
“If you dropped
your weights, they would try to go back and retrieve them, because you’d just be
damaging coral. These are no-anchoring zones, so they don’t drop anchor. There
are over a hundred buoys set up in the Keys so you can attach your boat and not
damage anything.”
A Work in
Progress
The efforts, Huelster
says, finally are paying off with positive results: The once-large sponge beds
are beginning a rebound after being wiped out in the 1950s. Some species of
fish, she says, also are beginning a recovery.
“The people down there are becoming more adjusted to
[the safeguards]. At first, some are outraged, and saying, ‘I’m not going to do
this. This is going to ruin our economy.’
“But now, they’re beginning to realize, through
education of different environmental groups or their own education, that they
need [the safeguards] to survive, because if [the ecosystem in the Keys] isn’t
healthy, then they’re not going to be able to live there.
“So, they’re kind of getting on the same page as of
now, but it’s still a work in progress.”