2.1 Study area

clear oligotrophic waters, with high oxygenation, and a salinity of 35 parts per

Lagoon Environments Around the World - A Scientific Perspective

Ocean, but their structures, characteristics, and components are different.

delimitation of the territorial sea and consequently its sovereignty.

above all their membership in one or another ocean system.

conservation of these reefs.

2. Material and methods

ical analysis.

210

In addition to the high diversity in which these ecosystems live and develop, they are very productive marine communities. They play a critical role as habitat and protection areas of approximately 10–20% of the world's fisheries [5, 6].This great system consists of sections that confer zoning. These sections can or will not be presented according to the type of reef in question, providing a distinctive and unique trait to each one. In our case, we will focus on the description of one of these sections, the reef lagoon, and we will do this by confronting the two largest reefs in Mexico, Alacranes Reef and Chinchorro Bank, both of them belong to the Atlantic

Both reefs have been studied under different aspects ranging from shipwrecks, [5] ecology [6, 7], biology [8], sociology [9], and paleontology [10], which gives us an idea of the importance of these ocean reefs to the country in relation to the exploitation of its natural resources, conservation, and even its importance in the

One of the fade questions, however, was: are these reefs subject to the same ecological-environmental pressures and controllers even though they belong to two different ocean systems? To get closer to this response, we try to put the reader in context by making a wide description of each reef highlighting its ecological, fishing, and tourist importance, showing the results obtained through two sampling periods in the lagoon in particular and discussing them in relation to the southern, central, and northern areas of each of them, the leeward and windward zones and

One of the objectives of this research is to determine whether there are differences in the processes that occur in a given area of the reef, and this will lead to different ideas about whether it is possible to propose conservation and management plan differentials; different surveillance efforts, in the case of protected areas; differences in the natural resources exploitation, etc. That is the importance of this study. In the biological-ecological sense, there are also a number of objectives such as identifying the most important species in the structure of the lagoon community, knowing the dominant species in each area, and determining whether there is a substitution of species in each time period and above all knowing how stability is in the broader sense of this area of the reefs, recognizing that corals can be under such pressure that they can suffer disease and even death when the ambient conditions change rapidly without giving time to acclimatization. Around the world there is concern about coral reef conditions, especially because of the multiple problems they face such as coastal development and alterations by human influence that lead to a higher rate than estimated. Solutions to this problem can only be given through a vigorous drive for scientific research, particularly ecological and necessarily multidisciplinary that proposes informed procedures with firm scientific foundations. Fortunately, there are national and international efforts to preserve the health of reefs by restraining their arguments and procedures in scientific discoveries; we are sure that our contribution will serve as a further support to the efforts of

In this section we will present the study areas, the general characteristics of each reef, as well as the methodology used to obtain the data and the subsequent numer-

thousand [4].

Both reefs are oceanic and the largest in Mexico and are marine protected areas: Alacranes reef with the National Park status and Chinchorro Bank as a biosphere reserve.

The physiographic reef structure makes it possible to recognize two sections, windward and leeward, and at least four main areas, South Lagoon, Central Lagoon, North Lagoon, and reef crest that border each reef.
