[Coral-List] Panama oil spill study
Eugene Shinn
eshinn at marine.usf.edu
Tue May 4 09:24:25 EDT 2010
Yes, the Panama study of oil effects was the largest most expensive
study of oil effects of its kind. I heard much about it from
representatives of the agency that funded the study. One aspect of
the study not fully appreciated when the 1989 Science article that
described results of the 1986 spill was published was that the
Caribbean-wide coral disease episode had stepped up dramatically
between 1983 and 84. Bleaching would follow in 1986 and 1987. In
retrospect one can safely speculate that much of the documented
coral, and Diadema demise, as well as seafan disease, would have
happened in Panama even if there had been no oil spill. With 20 20
hindsight one has to wonder how much of the coral demise at Panama
was actually caused by the spill? In fact, disease was already
showing up in un oiled control areas in Panama according to personal
communications with some of the representatives of the agency that
funded the study.
The reef at Goleta point is an enigma. I visited the reef with
Harold Hudson in 1974 to examine Ian MacIntyre's coring rig while he
was doing his ground breaking study with Peter Glynn. The weather was
beautiful, the water was warm, and there was the full compliment of
Atlantic corals on the basically Acropora palmata reef, but water
visibility was limited to about 30 feet. When we asked researchers at
the laboratory about the poor water visibility we were told that what
we saw was as good as it gets, and that during the monsoon season the
water looks like coffee with cream! We were told, "The water gets so
murky that experimental settling plates on the reef were coded with a
braille system so that divers could distinguish one panel from
another." Surprisingly the corals appeared healthy. That was 1974
before the beginning of serious and ongoing coral diseases affecting
corals throughout the Caribbean. Gene
--
No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
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E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
Marine Science Center (room 204)
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eshinn at marine.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158----------------------------------
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