coral bleaching ...

[sharky60]

what is the coral bleaching like lately? I know water temps have been high for several years now.
Someone on a FB page was freaking out Cedral and bricks were "nearly completely bleached out" ...
true or does this guy not really know what bleaching is?

 

[ggunn]

I heard on the radio a couple of days ago that the water temperature around south Florida had reached 100 degrees F and that chunks of coral were being removed from the reefs to be stored in cool salt water tanks to keep them alive until they could be set back out.

 

[MotoB]

My group just returned from Roatan last week. Bleaching was very bad. Almost every hard coral was just white skeleton. 60’ depth and water temps were 83- 85 dF.

 

[The Chairman]

I just asked Coral Restoration to let us know how things are. I hope they respond.

 

[rmssetc]

I heard on the radio a couple of days ago that the water temperature around south Florida had reached 100 degrees F and that chunks of coral were being removed from the reefs to be stored in cool salt water tanks to keep them alive until they could be set back out.

Probably the same NPR story that I heard, about coral removal this past summer, with the prospect of replanting(?) it soon.

 

[DanBMW]

About a year ago, in February, we dove in the Garden of the Queen, on the south side of Cuba and the coral was in great shape. We did the same dive last month and all of the coral was bleached. The water temperature was in the high 80 last month. I can only hope that it comes back, as it has in a few other parts of the world.

 

[ggunn]

Probably the same NPR story that I heard, about coral removal this past summer, with the prospect of replanting(?) it soon.

That would be the one I heard.

 

[DanBMW]

That would be the one I heard.

Coral removal, storage, harvesting and replanting has been going on for quite a while by numerous organizations, including The Florida Aquarium, where I'm a volunteer diver. The idea being to learn more about what is causing the problem and then trying to store coral for future re-planting. In addition research is being done to try for more resilient corals and maybe a "super coral." The Florida Aquarium has spent $100,000's of dollars on research and storage in an Arc like environment.

 

[Tunaman68]

In these shots from October you can see the finger corals that have mostly all been bleached- some deeper reefs were not this bad but there were two other kinds of corals that were not doing well either. There is a trip report thread a few days back that had some very detailed pictures of the bleaching that I observed.

 

[ReadyTo Dive]

Here now and bleaching is pretty bad, more than I thought it would be. Columbia was especially bad. Some places still have some flesh left on the hard corals but very, very little overall.

As a sidenote the lobsters are larger and more plentiful than ever before; maybe there is some correlation? Don't know but definitely something I've noticed.