FL - Coral researchers see ‘mass mortality’ amid Florida Keys bleaching crisis
Iconic elkhorn and staghorn corals took the heaviest losses, and researchers say they are at risk of becoming “functionally extinct” in the Florida Reef.
Battered by heat, washed out to a bleached, white hue and ravaged by disease, corals offshore of Key Largo used what little energy they had left to spawn the next generation that could save their populations.
These elkhorn and staghorn corals — recognized by their iconic branching arms that provide habitat for hundreds of species — are some of the most vulnerable among reefs.
Just weeks after spawning season, more than 90% of those parent corals are dead.
Elkhorn corals are already considered “functionally extinct” in the upper Keys, and other elkhorn and staghorn populations in the Florida Reef arefollowing suit, according to Liv Williamson, an assistant scientist of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami. That means there are a small number of individual corals left in the only living barrier reefin the continental United States — the world’s third-largest. It stretches about 360 miles from Dry Tortugas National Park to the St. Lucie Inlet — but they can’t reproduce enough in the wild to support a viable population.
Only a few hundred unique individuals of these corals are left in all of Florida: about 150 elkhorn and 300 staghorn, according to a July updatefrom the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Researchers have called this summer’s record ocean temperatures the worst bleaching event in Florida’s history, and they harvested corals from reefs in efforts to save them. Throughout the summer, scientists repeatedly warned that this loss of color could soon give way to loss of life. Now, the death toll is becoming evident.
“We just see a lot of corals that are fully dead at this point,” Williamson said.
She returned to the same Key Largo reef every two weeks during the summer. She said she’s watched the animals she studies bleach and die.
