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BlackWater KeyWest -corals dying???
Someone posted this on a turtle forum I frequently visit.
(Excerpt from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thus. 3/28/02 by Curtis Morgan)
"Miami- A zone of dying sponges and coral off Key West has suddenly elevated the formation dubbed "black water" from scientific mystery to major environmental concern.
In the first reliable underwater assessment of impact on marine life, a commercial diver documented enough damage to raise alarm that baffling blob may left a swath of unseen destruction in its wake as it slowly drifted from the Gulf of Mexico across FL Bay over the last few months......
..........."The water was a creepy green at the suface, and by the time I got to the bottem it was really creepy and dark," Ken Nedimyer, member of the FL Keys Natl. Marine Sanctuary.....
.......six species of rope sponge hit the hardest with 50-75% wiped out, as well as a number of other sponges dead or dying. Brain coral and starfish also seemed to be suffering. Fish in area seemed healthy, though curiously unhungry......
......The mass--described as the color of sewer water-- is breaking up and shrinking, at one point it spanned several hundred miles. While scientists were still sorting though water samples, satellite images, weather reports, historical studies and observations, the sponge die-off is another indicator that the culprit is an explosion of some sort of microscopic plankton, said Brain Keller, the sanctuary's science coordinator......
.....As of now, "It's a phenomenon about which we are uncertain," said Beverly Roberts, research Admin. at FL Marine Research Inst. It could be caused by anything from pollution to some sort of decaying plant material, perhaps flushed to sea from land......
.......water samples have shown med. to high levels of two types of phytoplankton, tiny plants so essential to the marine food chain that they're called "the grass of the sea" Robert said."
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