I think it’s kind of neat that right
here on the doorstep of this big
metropolis in South Florida where
everybody comes to see beautiful white
sands and lie on the beach and enjoy the
sunshine and you know within the city
limits almost we have this fairly
healthy population of coral these corals
off of Miami Beach are survivors they’ve
lived through pollution climate change
ocean acidification water quality issues
the individual coral colonies that have
made it must have something in their
genetic makeup or some fortune of
circumstance that’s allowing them to
survive in this pretty disturbed and
certainly less than pristine environment
where we’re seeing corals declining
around the world these corals seem to be
rebounding and they’re doing okay here
they could be the seed population for
repopulating Caribbean reefs but instead
of protecting them and studying them we
are actually burying them smothering
them in sediment a lot of colonies have
are just completely dead some some
colleagues at most a decades-old where
did have any living tissue on them at
all
Panama Canal is being deepened and
widened to accommodate what we now refer
to as post-panamax vessels and these are
extremely large cargo vessels that up
until now have not been able to access
the Port of Miami because the channel
was not deep enough because of that
ports along the eastern seaboard are in
a race to get their ports ready and
deepened and widened to accommodate
these shipping giants the dredging
process generates sedimentation in the
water and eventually that sedimentation
will settle out and in this case it was
settling on the reef the entire area
looks like a moonscape and in my view
probably will never come back corals are
declining worldwide and we can’t just
expect them to rebound like they might
have in the past and this time if you
kill these reefs they might not ever be
coming back yeah that’s a real tragedy
for our city and for anybody who cares
about reefs or biodiversity or any one
of the number of services that coral
reefs can provide
here on the doorstep of this big
metropolis in South Florida where
everybody comes to see beautiful white
sands and lie on the beach and enjoy the
sunshine and you know within the city
limits almost we have this fairly
healthy population of coral these corals
off of Miami Beach are survivors they’ve
lived through pollution climate change
ocean acidification water quality issues
the individual coral colonies that have
made it must have something in their
genetic makeup or some fortune of
circumstance that’s allowing them to
survive in this pretty disturbed and
certainly less than pristine environment
where we’re seeing corals declining
around the world these corals seem to be
rebounding and they’re doing okay here
they could be the seed population for
repopulating Caribbean reefs but instead
of protecting them and studying them we
are actually burying them smothering
them in sediment a lot of colonies have
are just completely dead some some
colleagues at most a decades-old where
did have any living tissue on them at
all
Panama Canal is being deepened and
widened to accommodate what we now refer
to as post-panamax vessels and these are
extremely large cargo vessels that up
until now have not been able to access
the Port of Miami because the channel
was not deep enough because of that
ports along the eastern seaboard are in
a race to get their ports ready and
deepened and widened to accommodate
these shipping giants the dredging
process generates sedimentation in the
water and eventually that sedimentation
will settle out and in this case it was
settling on the reef the entire area
looks like a moonscape and in my view
probably will never come back corals are
declining worldwide and we can’t just
expect them to rebound like they might
have in the past and this time if you
kill these reefs they might not ever be
coming back yeah that’s a real tragedy
for our city and for anybody who cares
about reefs or biodiversity or any one
of the number of services that coral
reefs can provide
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