September 1 - KONK Network

JW Right now we are just doing it up near Summerland
Key and Looe Key and some other sites a
little bit north of Key West in some of the more
popular dive sites. We want to make sure they are
propagating properly and starting to build coral
gardens that allows them to create the environment
where they can start to populate themselves and see
their own spawn and see their own replication.
GD I understand that a new research study has
definitively linked the demise of coral to a specific
cause. What is that?
JW Human waste. ey were able to link human waste
as a factor that inhabits coral reproduction and also
stresses existing corals when they are here in the wild
and in the Florida Keys. As you know there have been a
lot of movements to increase the amount of pump-out
facilities that we have here for liveaboards and also for
visiting vessels. We hope that we are going to see the
same with some of the larger transient vessels such as
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Coral spawning
| Mote Marine
/on the waterfront/
Elkhorn coral
| NOAA SEFSC
cruise ships that apparently release some of their
waste far offshore.
GD How was it determined that human waste is so
detrimental to the life of coral?
JW It effects the natural antibiotic covering of corals
and makes them more susceptible to disease such as
blackband disease, bleaching and white pox. And when
you affect the natural defense of the animals and start
to diminish their ability to fend off things that occur
in the water, then you’re obviously not doing a good
thing for future of the species.
GD One of the other areas that came under a big, heavy
impact back in the 1980s was the loss of sea urchins.
MOTE Marine Laboratories has been working
on bringing back the sea urchin population.
How is that coming along?
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