It's the year of the reef. The Guam Hotel and Restaurant Association recently discussing a top tourist attraction: coral reefs and promoting eco-friendly tourism.

Coral Reefs are alive. Mallory Morgan is a visiting fellow from the National Coral Reef Management who dedicates her life to protecting coral reefs. She says it's the plants and algae living inside of coral that keeps coral living with such vibrant red, blue, and purple hues. On Guam there are more than 350 species of coral on a reef that would add up to 20,000 football fields long.

It's a unique biodiversity many tourists pay to see, as Morgan said, "This is something tourists come here for but beyond the beauty of reefs it's really important to understand the shoreline protection that reefs provide to our infrastructure protection reefs provide to our hotels, and our beaches."

In recent years, she outlines how global warming has damaged the coral, in what is known as "coral bleaching". She explained, "What's happening is since the coral is like animal, just like puppy dogs, just like you and me, they're getting really stressed out cause it's really hot they expel the plants the food that gives them color and makes them turn white, that's what causes the white and that's why it's called coral bleaching."

It's a global issue with local stressors. Such as sediment runoff, overfishing, and recreational damage that can add to the loss of Guam's main tourist attraction-the coral reef. She stresses favorite tourist activities can be damaging like kayaks that bump into the coral or tourists accidentally stepping on the reef while snorkeling.

She says her goal here on Guam is to work with hotel managers and tourists to preserve this natural resource. "My focus is really how can we keep these reefs healthy and keep the tourists coming with social media and Yelp and Instagram the whole world knows exactly what everything looks like right away so it's really important to keep these reefs healthy," she said.

GHRA will be hosting more trainings to educate the tourism industry on safe-reef tourism.