Wow...that does sound depressing!  I came across a link for people concerned
about this and sustaining all ecosystems in our world...  It has some great
links to other sites as well including sites with webcams...
http://www.sei.org/caribreef.html
                                                     LaVerne Lambert in
sunny, warm Florida...


>From: "J. Ross Mayhew" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Conchologists List <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Carribean corals in trouble
>Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 05:49:55 -0300
>
>Just came across a good article about how much trouble Carribean reefs
>seem to be in: things are looking rather grim all-round on the coral
>side of the marine eco-system spectrum these days, not just in the
>Pacific but all over the world.  Much of the planet's reef systems may
>be gone in less, perhaps considerably less, than a century.
>
>http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10193
>
>I include the first part of the article below: it is too big for a
>single message:
>
>Coral Die-Off Spreads to Caribbean
>
>/April 04, 2006 -- By Kevin Wadlow, Florida Keys Keynoter/ MARATHON,
>Fla. -- The alarming scenario has spread to waters of Caribbean: Large
>coral colonies bleaching white, and then dying.
>
>Marine biologists in the Florida Keys have seen it already.
>
>"The declines now being seen on reefs in the Virgin Islands and
>Caribbean are very similar to declines that have been seen on Keys
>reefs, caused by bleaching and disease," said Cheva Heck, information
>officer for Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
>
>"It shows the problems are the same all over," Heck said. "It's not just
>the Keys, but the region and the world. We've heard reports from the
>Pacific, as well."
>
>According to an Associated Press report, recent estimates from Puerto
>Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands say 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," Miller said. "These are corals that are the
>foundation of the reef ... colonies that were here when Columbus came by
>have died in the past three to four months."
>
>Sunday, Edwin Hernandez-Delgado, a University of Puerto Rico biology
>researcher, found a colony of 800-year-old star coral that towered more
>than 13 feet high had recently died in waters off Puerto Rico.
>
>"We did lose entire colonies," he said. "This is something we have never
>seen before."
>
>Wednesday, Tyler Smith, coordinator of the U.S. Virgin Islands Coral
>Reef Monitoring Program, dived at a popular spot for tourists in St.
>Thomas and saw an old chunk of brain coral, about 3 feet in diameter,
>that was at least 90 percent dead from the disease called white plague.
>
>"We haven't seen an event of this magnitude in the Caribbean before,"
>said Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
>Administration's Coral Reef Watch.
>
>For the Caribbean, it all started with hot sea temperatures, first in
>Panama in the spring and early summer, and got worse from there.
>
>New NOAA sea-surface temperature figures show the sustained heating in
>the Caribbean last summer and fall was by far the worst in 21 years of
>satellite monitoring, Eakin said.
>
>"The 2005 event is bigger than all the previous 20 years combined," he
>said. It remained hot for weeks, even months, stressing the coral.
>
>The heat causes the symbiotic algae that provides food for the coral to
>die and turn white. That puts the coral in critical condition. If coral
>remains bleached for more than a week, the chance of death soars,
>according to NOAA scientists.
>
>In the past, only some coral species would bleach during hot-water
>spells and the problem would occur only at certain depths. But in 2005,
>bleaching struck far more of the region at all depths and in most species.
>
>- ross mayhew (on a wet, cold and stormy night somewhere in the
>wilderness of New Scotland).

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