Coral researchers have been warning it would happen, and now the bleaching has begun on South Florida reefs.
“It just looks horrific, it looks like this could be the worst bleaching event ever to hit Florida,” said Bill Precht, formerly of NOAA and a veteran coral scientist.
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WATCH HEREResearchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration documented extensive coral bleaching on reefs in the Florida Keys a few days ago. Bleaching is a stress response that can be caused by disease, pollution, or high water temperatures.
Precht says it’s often, but not always, fatal to the coral.
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We spoke to him on July 18, and at the time, he warned that bleaching caused by high sea temperatures was imminent, but didn’t expect to see it for a few more weeks.
“So what’s changed is the temperatures have increased as they were expected to but they’ve been so high that the corals reacted faster than we imagined,” Precht said.
“This is the earliest and the strongest temperature event that we’ve seen here, so there’s no script for this, we have not seen anything like this,” said Sarah Fangman, the superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which covers more than 3,000 square miles.
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“Obviously in some places, it is very concerning but we are already seeing mortality which is very early for this kind of temperature stress,” Fangman said. “Earlier and faster mortality.”
The bleaching is moving from the Keys north toward Miami-Dade and Broward. Fangman says it’s not everywhere. She saw normal reefs on a dive Sunday, and there’s an effort ongoing by NOAA, the University of Miami, and non-profit groups such as the Coral Restoration Foundation to rescue corals by moving them to cooler waters.
“Obviously we’re not able to move the whole reef into deeper, cooler water but we are actively saving a lot of corals, and those are the future, those are the rootstock that will become the reefs of our future,” Fangman said.
But for the near future, Precht says the outlook is grim because the forecast calls for continued high ocean temperatures.
“We’re looking at potentially losing greater than 50% of our corals and maybe as much as 100% of our corals at some sites,” Precht warned.
“We can’t overstate how important these reefs are and why it is so critical that we do everything we can to help protect them,” Fangman said.
I asked Precht how depressing this situation is for him.
“Well I’ve been doing this for 45 years and it’s heartbreaking,” he said.
