Reef Relief - Coral Reef Conservation: Major Accomplishments


REEF RELIEF's Major Accomplishments 1999-2000 Fiscal Year

Marine Projects directed by Craig Quirolo:
This report identifies the major accomplishments of Reef Relief over the past fiscal year, July 1,1999-June 30, 2000. Thank you for being a sea fan! Coral reefs are as beautiful as they are endangered, but with your help, we have been able to take great strides to protect them. Since 1986, Reef Relief has combined direct action at the reef-installing buoy moorings, monitoring the reefs and creating coral nurseries--with grassroots education and policy guidance on land to increase understanding and support for things we can all do to protect coral reefs. During the past year, Reef Relief has focused on five major programs and we have accomplished the following Major Achievements:
In the Florida Keys, our grassroots Clean Water Campaign bore real results to improve water quality through improved sewage treatment with three great victories this year:
	An accelerated 2 year plan to provide the City of Key West with advanced sewage treatment, new city sewer lines, and phase out the ocean outfall, funded by sewer bonds approved by 83% of the voters and additional funding garnered from state and federal sources;
	Establishment of the Key West No Discharge Zone for boater sewage, receipt of grant funding to provide additional pump-out facilities at city marinas; and launching of the Pump It. Don't Dump It campaign to encourage compliance.
	Funding for water quality improvements-Reef Relief has worked at the state and federal level to encourage funding to match local efforts to improve water quality. This year the state is dedicating $18 million to Key West improvements; with FEMA adding another $7.2 million. In Congress the Florida Keys Water Quality Improvement Act seeks $213 billion for the Keys.
	County Commission approval of a proposal to provide Key Largo with advanced wastewater sewage treatment through a design/build/operate proposal for central sewage from Ogden Water supported by a grassroots campaign with Clean Water Now banners, stickers, and press.
Our multi-media Coral Reef Awareness Campaign for target audiences in the Florida Keys and elsewhere enlisted a variety of different audiences with information on why and how they can protect coral reefs through the Discover Coral Reefs School Outreach Program, Reef Line newsletter, special events including Reef Awareness Week, radio announcements, slide shows, teacher kits, operation of the Reef Relief Environmental Center & Gift Shop and an extensive website at www.reefrelief.org.
In the Abacos, Bahamas, we helped the communities of Green Turtle Cay and Hope Town launch coral reef conservation programs and strengthened protection in marine protected areas through the installation of 25 reef mooring buoys, creation of a coral nursery, hosting of a community workshops and two splicing parties and distribution of 2000 Green Turtle Cay Mooring Buoy Charts with reef tips.
On a national and state level, we guided policy development for issues affecting coral reefs around the globe and within Florida. We succeeded in convincing the USEPA to consider requiring advanced treatment for any effluent discharged into deep injection wells, and a recent proposed rule provides that option, contrary to an earlier approach to allow migration of such effluent with additional monitoring only. Public hearings are planned for August 22 and 24th, with Reef Relief there to guide support for advanced treatment of all injected waste. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has approved preliminary rule-making to ban fish feeding in Florida waters and a final hearing is set for September 7th. Reef Relief is an active member of the national Marine Fish Conservation Network dedicating to improving the health of marine fisheries.
Each of these initiatives have depended upon the Coral Photo Monitoring Surveys performed by Craig Quirolo at Key West area coral reefs and elsewhere throughout the Caribbean that have shown us in clear, stark detail why we must move quickly to increase protection for coral reefs. Craig's relentless documentation of the massive loss of coral coverage at Key West area reefs, and his field support for scientific efforts at these reefs, is reaching a wide audience as a result of several newly-released scientific papers. Reef Relief encouraged the study of coral diseases, based on our initial discoveries of so many of them. The results from Porter, et al is not encouraging, but confirms our findings: The Coral Reef Monitoring Project (CRMP) Analysis of Trends 1996-1999 by Drs. Phil Dustan, James W. Porter and Walter Jaap for the Water Quality Protection Program of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary concludes that "Since 1996, the CRMP sites have experienced loss of coral diversity, more sites lost coral species than remained unchanged or gained species. There has been an epidemic of coral diseases as evidenced by increases in spatial and habitat distribution of diseases, more types of diseases, and more coral species infected. The majority of the sites that have been monitored and analyzed to date have lost coral cover." The Flood the Bay effort that Reef Relief has opposed has been scientifically debunked in a recent paper by Dr. Larry Brand of the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine Science entitled An Evaluation of the Scientific Basis for "Restoring" Florida Bay by Increasing Freshwater Runoff from the Everglades. Dr. Brand's research, supported in part by Reef Relief's field support, indicate that: Taken together, these data suggest that nutrients from Everglades agricultural runoff are being transported to not just Florida Bay, but also the Florida Keys and coral reefs, and contributing to their eutrophication. Because the net flow of water is from the northwest to the southeast (from Florida Bay to the coral reefs), the proposal to open up more passages along the Florida Keys between Florida Bay and the coral reefs to the south for greater water exchange (U.S. Army Corps of Engineer and So. Fla. Water Management District, 1999) will lead to increased nutrient loading and eutrophication of the coral reefs. Craig has assisted the research done on sea fans and the aspergillosus fungus by Kiho Kim and Drew Harvell of Cornell University that led to a paper published in the September 1999 issue of Science Magazine, entitled Emerging Marine Diseases-Climate Links and Anthropogenic Factors by C.D. Harvell, K. Kim, et al. Craig's photos of sea fans from June 1996 to November 1997 provide graphic evidence of the damage caused by aspergilllus sydowii on a monitored sea fan. The paper concludes that "First, monitoring of coral diseases in the Florida Keys indicates that there has been an increase in the number of new diseases. Second, because corals are long-lived and many of the new diseases are highly virulent, current levels of disease prevalence, if they had occurred in previous decades, would have been detected. Finally, evidence from the fossil record indicates that shifts in community structure due to disease are not commonplace on these coral reefs. ... These results suggest that the current agaricia and porites replacements were unique in the recent ecological history of the Caribbean coral fauna. Two conditions-climate variability and human activity-appear to have played roles in epidemics by undermining host resistance and facilitating pathogen transmission. Warming oceans have had a number of consequences for disease dynamics. Human activity has greatly enhanced global transport of marine species including pathogens. Habitat degradation and pollutant inputs, often brought about by human activity, can facilitate disease outbreaks. Human activity has also added to the pathogen load in the oceans, primarily through sewage discharges, although storm waters also carry human and animal wastes." There is some growth exhibited at the Reef Relief Coral Nursery at Western Sambo Reef, and the methology used to stabilize the storm-damaged fragments of acropora palmata is sound. However, some fragments have become diseased. Nonetheless, sanctuary biologists have removed the rosettes to a boat grounding site to use these corals for a restoration project. In June, 2000, Quirolo utilized this same methodology to stabilize storm-damaged fragments of acropora palmata to the ocean bottom, creating a new coral nursery at No Name Cay in the Abacos, Bahamas.

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