Tag: coral reefs

Corals provide information on climate change according to NOAA

Scientists studying impact of Deepwater Horizon oil spill on coral reefs

Navy Commander Expresses Regret Concerning USS Guardian Grounding

U.S. Navy Ship Stuck On Coral Reef

Coral Triangle Reefs Threatened At Rate Above Global Average

GQ is a spectacular reef off of Cuba's south coast 60 Minutesran a really great piece onJardines de la Reina orGardens of the Queen (GQ), last night. GQ is a spectacular reef off of Cuba's south coast with abundant predators including goliath and black grouper and Caribbean reef sharks.The very few remaining Caribbean reefs like GQ with fish communities that are more or less intact are invaluable. They show reef managers, policy makers and the public how spectacular reef fish can be (when we don't eat them) and are essential for science. Despite some inaccuracies about the state of the benthos that I'll outline below, I thought the60 Minutespiece was great for reef conservation in general. Anderson Cooper did a nice (if imperfect) job explaining how reefs are threatened and why that should matter to us. The storytelling, imagery and editing were superb.Now, on to the fact checking.There are a lot of predators at GQ True We have been surveying reefs throughout the Caribbean over the last several years, purposefully looking for reefs with lots of sharks and grouper, and GQ has more than anywhere else we have been. The total fish biomass at GQ is ~600g per square meter, ...

NOAA video

Successful restoration and near decade-long monitoring effort by NOAA Corals damaged in 2002 when a boat ran aground in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary are now thriving following a restoration and near decade-long monitoring effort, according to a new NOAA report released. With hundreds of groundings happening each year in the sanctuary, lessons learned from this coral reef restoration and monitoring will guide future restoration efforts.Following a 2002 boat grounding near Key West, restoration biologists assessed the damage and reattached broken corals.In August 2002, the 36-foot long boat Lagniappe II ran aground on a shallow coral reef near Key West, Fla., damaging approximately 376 square-feet of living coral in the sanctuary. After sanctuary staff assessed the damage to the reef, restoration biologists used special cement that hardens under water to reattach 473 corals and coral fragments that had been toppled or dislodged during the grounding. The majority of affected corals were boulder star coral, a primary reef building coral in the Florida Keys.To determine the progress of their restoration efforts, the sanctuary and the National Coral Reef Institute of Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center, used digital photographs and highly specialized computer software to count the types and amounts of ...

Miami prepares to dredge its port to accommodate supersize freighters As Miami prepares to dredge its port to accommodate supersize freighters, environmentalists are making a last-ditch effort to protect threatened coral reefs and acres of sea grass that they say would be destroyed by the expansion. The number of successful piracy attacks on ships off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden has decreased this year leading to fears that there will be an escalation in violence against seafarers.

Analysis of reefs in the South China Sea TAU researcher discovers that endangered soft corals are also building blocks of coral reefsScientists have long believed soft corals, one of the many endangered elements of marine life, are only minor contributors to the structure of coral reefs. But that's not true, says new research from Tel Aviv University - and the preservation of soft corals is essential to the health of our seas.Joint research by Tel Aviv University and the Academia Sinica, the National Museum of Natural Science of Taiwan, and National Taiwan University has revealed that soft corals, like stony corals, are one of the central building blocks of a reef, says Prof. Yehuda Benayahu of TAU's Department of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences. A new in-depth analysis of reefs in the South China Sea has revealed that massive parts of the reefs are actually made from cemented microscopic skeletal elements of soft corals termed sclerites.The finding, which recently appeared in the journal Coral Reefs, challenges conventional knowledge about soft corals and makes their conservation a priority. Like whales, dolphins, and stony corals, soft corals are a critically important component of the marine environment, Prof. ...