ORLANDO, Fla. – Right now, the Great Florida Reef is experiencing catastrophic conditions following a marine heat wave that has engulfed the ecosystem for months.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the marine heat waved moved into the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea around February and March and is predicted to persist with extreme ocean temperatures through at least October.
The duration and intensity of these abnormally warm waters is a significant concern for the health of the coral.
Dr. Cory Krediet, an associate professor of marine science specializing in corals at Eckerd College, spoke to News 6 while helping rescue efforts in the Florida Keys.
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“We’re looking to use microbes to try to increase resilience of corals to future stress. But right now, here at Mote Marine Lab, restoration efforts are happening. They’re bringing corals back from the reef into the land-based nurseries, to try and keep them out of the reef environment until some conditions hopefully may subside back to normal,” Krediet said.
Across the reef, researchers and scientists are seeing coral bleaching. This is when marine life loses its color in response to long periods of heat stress, showing their stark white coral skeleton.
“Corals can recover from bleaching, they’re not necessarily dead,” Krediet said. “And if conditions returned back to normal, they can recover from that bleaching event. But if these heat stress events last for longer than a couple of weeks, then it’s likely that the corals will succumb to mortality. And then those corals are lost.”
NOAA has issued a Level 2 bleaching alert along the Florida Keys, as the reef has reached a point where significant mortality is likely.
“The health of the coral is at a catastrophic loss,” Krediet said. “This is an unprecedented level of temperature increase and it happened at a rate that the corals cannot deal with. We went from healthy reefs to bleach reefs and dead reefs within 10 days.”
He added that it’s horrific to see.
“It’s something that I’ve never seen in person before and the images, the photographs, the corals that I’ve seen come back to land. It’s just hard to watch,” Krediet said.
Why should you care?
- Protecting lives and property on the coast: The three-dimensional habitats that corals produce absorb about 97% of wave energy from storms and hurricanes. This buffer helps protect the coastline from storms, surges and flooding across southeast Florida.
- Health of marine life: Coral reefs represent at least 25%, if not more, of the marine biodiversity in our oceans globally. Coral reefs only take up about 1% of the ocean floor, but yet maintain that level of biodiversity. So, if we lose these specimens, we’re losing all that biodiversity, which may include many species that have not been characterized and described yet.
- Fishing and tourism industry: According to NOAA, coral reefs in southeast Florida have an asset value of $8.5 billion, generating $4.4 billion in local sales, $2 billion in local income and 70,400 full- and part-time jobs. NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service estimated the annual commercial value of U.S. fisheries from coral reefs to be over $100 million. Reef-based recreational fisheries generate over $100 million annually in the U.S.
- Biomedical technologies: There is a lot of research going on in coral reefs with regards to biomedical technologies. Researchers are looking for novel medicines and drugs to fight human diseases from sponges that exist on corals.
“It’s not even clear what coral reefs are going to be able to do for us in the future, but with the amount of stress and threats that they’re facing now, we might not be able to take advantage of them if we don’t do something.” Krediet said.
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