Posted on 03/30/2006 1:59:47 PM PST by LM_Guy
WASHINGTON (AP) - A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters.
Researchers from around the globe are scrambling to figure out the extent of the loss. Early conservative estimates from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands find that about one-third of the coral in official monitoring sites has recently died.
"It's an unprecedented die-off," said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. "The mortality that we're seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef ... We're talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months."
Some of the devastated coral can never be replaced because it only grows the width of one dime a year, Miller said.
Coral reefs are the basis for a multibillion-dollar tourism and commercial fishing economy in the Caribbean. Key fish species use coral as habitat and feeding grounds. Reefs limit the damage from hurricanes and tsunamis. More recently they are being touted as possible sources for new medicines.
If coral reefs die "you lose the goose with golden eggs" that are key parts of small island economies, said Edwin Hernandez-Delgado, a University of Puerto Rico biology researcher.
On Sunday, Hernandez-Delgado found a colony of 800-year-old star coral - more than 13 feet high that had just died in the waters off Puerto Rico.
"We did lose entire colonies," he said. "This is something we have never seen before."
On Wednesday, Tyler Smith, coordinator of the U.S. Virgin Islands Coral Reef Monitoring program, dived at a popular spot for tourists in St...
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
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For some reason those who believe the most ferverently in evolution are the ones that complain the most as it takes its course.
This is tragic. We've had lots of memorable dives in those waters. I say this because I'm a liar. Coral schmoral, it comes and it goes.
BINGO!!
Adapt or die. The only constant in the universe is change.
Karl Rove is taking us out of the last Ice Age, eventually only to bring us into the next one. It's a full court press/Rope-A-Dope gambit on the RATs. I tell ya its cyclical thing, like a pendulum, but the RATs and their extortionist RAT junk-scientists just can't see it.
Abandoned oil platforms make excellent artificial reefs.
Problem solved.
Drill offshore Florida now!
How long have they been monitoring these reefs? How can they be so sure this is an unprecedented event?
Desecheo and Mona in the Mona Passage.
The reefs down in the caribbean have been dying for years,,we have been diving for the past 20 years and it is serious, worse every year. Sad thing to see.
Bob Marley's fault!
When the article makes this stupid assertion, you know that it's a lefty environmentalist reporter at the keyboard. That's nonsense.
I don't suppose the hurricanes had ANTHING to do with the coral losses either huh?
Really.. if coral reefs are soooo fragile, how can they lessen the effects of hurricanes or tsunamis, two of the most destructive forces of nature on the planet . . . except for Bush, of course.
Nice screenname. Haven't seen that one since, oh, 1971. Axe into the door or windowframe next to the head, as I recall. Or has my memory gone completely kaput in my late middle age?
They cut down the wave action damage...but of course are of no help against wind and surge.
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