America's Deepest Coral Reef
Posted By Tim Taylor on 20 February 2007
It is with mixed emotions that I sit on my fly-bridge anchored in the Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida, writing these thoughts. It is early June, 2006, nearly a year after I descended 230 feet below the surface of the ocean to be amongst the first to physically touch bottom and photograph the world's deepest coral reef - Pulley Ridge, the healthiest reef I have seen in my lifetime. On this beautiful summer day a year later, I am hosting my sixth major coral research project in a year and a half,, with a group of National Park Service coral biologists who are revisiting a shallow reef which they have been studying since 1997. They are conducting a monitoring program designed to track the health of this coral reef system, one of the few Florida reefs still more alive than dead. In stark contrast to Pulley Ridge the NPS project sadly is the documentation of a reef in decline as most of our shallow water reefs are these days.
Not unlike a canary in a coalmine, coral is more susceptible to environmental impacts than other creatures (yes - coral is alive and a member of the animal kingdom) and is therefore a good predictor of wider environmental troubles. In eight short years, the shallow reef I am floating over today has seen a decline in living coral cover of 50%*. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated or local phenomenon, all over the world corals may be living their last days on earth.
Over the past ten years and particularly in the last 18 months, I have supervised coral research expeditions aboard my research vessel R/V Tiburon. I have worked with Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Mote Marine Lab, USGS (United States Geological Survey), NOAA, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), University of Texas, Nova University, National Park Service, Harte Research Institute, Florida State University (FSU), and the University of Miami to understand what coral was once like and what is happening to our reefs today. Their studies are trying to find the cause of this decline; finding a cure is still not much more than a hope and a wish. Nevertheless, when asked scientists agree that three things are the major factors affecting coral health globally: climate changes, coastal pollution and development, and over-fishing. These factors all combine to radically alter the ecosystem and compound the stresses on coral reefs. According to the Nature Conservancy "coral reefs are currently one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet. If the present rate of destruction continues, 70% of the world's coral reefs will be killed within our lifetimes." The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in their Fact Sheet puts it this way--"[c] oral reefs are home to 25% of all marine species. However, the tiny colonial animals that build these intricate limestone masses are dying at alarming rates. If this trend continues, in 20 years the living corals on many of the world's reefs will be dead and the ecosystems that depend on them severely damaged." In May of 2006, two coral species in Florida and the Caribbean - Elkhorn (Acropora palmate) and Staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) -were the first corals placed on the Federal threatened list because of dangers posed by human activity, hurricanes, and higher water temperatures observed across the oceans. The Elkhorn and Staghorn coral species have suffered a 97 percent decline in areas off the Florida Keys and in the Caribbean since 1985 nearly obliterating the species while the surviving 3% are hanging on by a mere thread.
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