Scientists Warn of Coral Bleaching in Caribbean

[LavaSurfer]

Awesome info Fred, Thanks
The surf closer by 30 feet, that can cause some concern.

I was reading a book the other day that talked about florida and its new coastline after the melt. It was frightening to say the least. Miami turns into a key and the keys are gone. Many coastal cities will be in trouble.

Makes you wonder if its really worth all the money to rebuild new orleans or instead relocate it.



Very interesting.

 

[dlndavid]

I'm for a New New Orleans.

 

[archman]

what we need is a practical, reliable, low cost monitoring method
for assessing the biota and habitat conditions of coral reefs

We have in fact several. Atlantic & Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment (AGRRA) is one of the more popular Caribbean ones.
http://www.agrra.org/

You can also use existing NOAA satellites to perform neato photosynthetic wavelength scans over large swathes of ocean. Tells you crude types and densities of surface and shallow water phytoplankton and zooxanthellae, the major seaweed in hermatypic corals. Satellites can also check surface water temperatures simultaneously.

There's a couple decades of coral reef monitoring info in some areas (i.e. Discovery Bay); many others have 10-15 years of good data. The place I'll be teaching at this summer (San Salvador) has continuous records since 1992.

Nearly all long-term reef monitoring stations report significant community degradation over time. There are very few exceptions.

 

[H2Andy]

LOL

i guess it's too late to say it was a joke

 

[archman]

That was far too good a question to "demean" it in humour.

 

[H2Andy]

dang, have you been taking up geology lately?



and it wasn't really a question.... take a look at my post again:

http://www.scubaboard.com/showpost.php?p=1690472&postcount=70

 

[archman]

I looked at it. It comes off as an valid question. It must not be sarcastic in Texas.

Anyway, shut up! I wrote a nice post and gave the AGRRA link. I put like five whole minutes of deep thought into that. Feel the science.

 

[H2Andy]

five minutes huh?

dang...

i feel bad now

:14:

 

[archman]

More like seven, actually. I couldn't find the AGRRA link 'cuz I kept misspelling it as AGGRA.

 

[mrdawson]

http://dieoff.org/

But then again...the latest research shows that 129,000 years ago the earth warmed up without apparent human intervention and the seas rose 20 feet...
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/ice/

Think of all those new dive sites...

Yes.... This is true of course... There are natural cycles of warming and cooling through history (ice ages... and then the period the dinosaurs lived). What worries scientists is that there has been a steady trend of gradual warming despite the natural warming/cooling cycles, and the rate of the warming is faster than it has ever been.