ECO PRO
When Coral Collapse Happens in Real Time by Alex Brylske, Ph.D. , President, Ocean Education International, LLC, FL
F OR DECADES, we’ve talked about coral reef decline as if it were a long-range forecast, using terms like “stressed ecosystems” and “gradual loss of resilience” to suggest we have all the time in the world to plan, pivot, and adjust. We treated reef collapse like a slow- motion film – so slow you could almost forget the frames were ad- vancing. But recent experience in Florida has hit the fast-forward but- ton, and it is a wake-up call for
speed. Not geological speed. Not “five- year management plan” speed. Opera- tional speed. The kind of speed that means the reef you dove with your morning charter might not be the same reef you find when you return two weeks later. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s the synthesis of three critical scientific findings based on the research studies listed at the end of the article. Viewed together, they reveal a system in which heat, bleaching, and disease have stopped behaving as
Orthomosaics of healthy colonies on Horseshoe Reef in Key Largo, Florida, from July 11, 2023 (A) and visually bleached colonies from July 25, 2023 (B).
every dive professional on the planet.What we are seeing now is that while the causes of reef deterioration may accumulate over years, the actual collapse can happen with gut-wrenching
isolated incidents and have begun acting as a coordinated assault. Take the 2023 marine heatwave. My friend and colleague Dr. Karen Neely and her team tracked more than 4,200 brain and boulder coral colonies across nine Florida Keys reefs. Although mortality wasn't uniform, some sites were devastated. At Newfound Harbor, 43.1% of monitored colonies died during the event. At Cheeca Rocks, 30% died outright, and another 13% experienced partial mortality. These aren't just statistics; they mark the foundation of our industry disappearing in a single summer. And it happened fast. Neely reported that major losses at Newfound Harbor were already visible by early July. Most chillingly, the researchers suggest that some corals didn't even go through the “polite” sequence of bleaching then starving; they simply hit their thermal limit and died directly from the heat. When the interval between "this reef looks a bit pale" and “this reef is dead” shrinks to weeks, the old rules of thumb for reef management go out the window. Additionally, a team led by Miriam Ayad of the University of California, Santa Cruz, used spaceborne remote sensing to confirm that this wasn't just a local blip. They described a “cascade of simultaneous negative impacts” triggered by surface temperatures exceeding 38°C (over 100°F). When satellites detect massive optical changes on reefs such as Horseshoe and Cheeca during the event, you know you’re dealing with a crisis of unprecedented proportions. And then there’s the invisible threat. A study by Jan Landsberg of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
No coral, no fish.
Coral reefs are in trouble, and they need YOUR help.
Scan here to secure a fish-filled future
PAGE THIRTY-FOUR | SCUBA DIVING INDUSTRY
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker