[Coral-List] FW: Coral killing continues in Florida
Sarah Frias-Torres
sfrias_torres at hotmail.com
Fri Sep 11 00:50:00 EDT 2015
Gene,
That was an interesting reaction to my email.
You launch on
a personal attack for no reason. We’ve never met in person. I have nothing
against you.
Perhaps the limitations of the email, without eye to eye contact
and without the ability to read body language, render a message more aggressive
than it really is. I want to think this is the case. Because the alternative
would require you to apologize. That’s what a gentleman would do.
So we can solve this as two intelligent people would do. Let’s agree to meet one day and go scuba diving to see
the corals. Or the groupers. You tell me your point of view, and I’ll tell you
mine. Agreed?
Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D. Twitter: @GrouperDocBlog: http://grouperluna.wordpress.comhttp://independent.academia.edu/SarahFriasTorres
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Eugene Shinn <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Date: Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 6:07 AM
Subject: [Coral-List] Coral killing continues in Florida
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Sarah, Your rant re, "killing hundreds of acres of endangered
corals"---- the Corps of Engineers, "bulldozing crusade," "Port of Miami
disaster," and "nightmare" may be a little over stated. That kind of
language may create some excitement with some but is not likely to get
you anywhere with the agencies involved. Good scientists should not rant
that way or misidentify Golith Grouper poop for reproductive fluid as
you did on the list last year. Did you apologize to readers for that
mistake?
My former office on Fisher Island overlooked the dredging area in
question for 15 years. I know it well and although there were some
corals there it is a stretch to consider it a coral reef. That limestone
area had been essentially devoid of reef-building corals for millennia.
The few corals that were there were only the hardiest, weediest species.
In fact we could not grow corals in the water from government cut that
we collected there at high tide for experiments. Admittedly, that was
before the Virginia Key sewage outfall was moved further offshore. I am
aware that a large amount of money was spent moving corals and on
monitoring the effects of the dredging spoil on the few live corals
found there today (coral cover off Miami-Dade County is routinely
measured at a half percent or less by SECREMP). Some divers have
photographed sediment accumulations on corals near the dredge area but
were not aware the sediment was on corals already dead. The greatest
threat was the regional 2014 bleaching event followed by regional white
plague disease that ranged from Monroe to Palm Beach County well outside
the dredging area (and is still ongoing). The scientists doing the work
of course cannot discuss the results of the required monitoring studies
at the present time because of ongoing lawsuits. I suspect that at
sometime in the future many interesting publications and reports will
become available for more critical review. I can appreciate the feeling
of the many who have seen the unavoidable plumes that result from any
dredging but it is something that none of us can stop. The danger is
that strong contestable language now may backfire and create deleterious
effects on the credibility of coral scientists in the future. A year
from now the area in question will likely look no different than nearby
areas not touched by this dredging.Gene
--
No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
College of Marine Science Room 221A
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158
---------------------------------- -----------------------------------
More information about the Coral-List
mailing list