[Coral-List] NYTimes: Rising Ocean Temperatures Threaten Florida's Coral Reef
Tyler Smith
tsmith at uvi.edu
Tue May 23 15:10:45 EDT 2006
Hi Listers,
I just wanted to draw your attention to yesterday's issue of the New
York Times and the article "Rising Ocean Temperatures Threaten
Florida's Coral Reef". While it is great that the media is again
spotlighting the plight of coral reefs and I enjoy being interviewed
for such pieces, I wanted to clarify a misquotation. I did not mean
to have printed that I believe that the US Virgin Islands has lost
70-100% of its corals to bleaching. Instead the passage should have
read "We had 70-100% of our shallow water (less than 30m) reef
BLEACHED". Estimates of colony mortality from the Coral Reef
Monitoring Program are around 5% for the initial bleaching, with an
additional 5% from disease outbreaks following the bleaching. The
disease losses are still ongoing so this number will undoubtedly get
higher. Much of the mortality was partial, so in the final estimates
loss of coral cover will be much higher than loss of whole colonies.
I will keep you posted.
Cheers,
Tyler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tyler B. Smith, Ph.D.
USVI Territorial Coral Reef Monitoring Program
Center for Marine and Environmental Studies
University of the Virgin Islands
2 John Brewers Bay
St. Thomas, USVI 00802
USA
office: 340-693-1394
fax: 340-693-1405
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