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). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [log in to unmask] - a forum for informal discussions on molluscs To leave this list, click on the following web link: http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conch-l&A=1 Type your email address and name in the appropriate box and click leave the list. ----------------------------------------------------------------------