ON THE WATERFRONTON THE WATERFRONT
Scientists have discovered dying corals and animals near the site of this summer’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
days, a 100 perent mortality of brooding larvae, broadcast larvae and brooding larvae wanting to set- tle which is very disturbing because we were very lucky the loop current got disconnected or we would of had dispersants here, possibly within 72 hours. And if that had happened during that time when our corals were reproducing, we may have had a much more delete- rious effect. So one of the things that I think we all have to under- stand, even if somebody uses dis- persants 300 to 400 miles away from the Keys, if that dispersant can get here even in five to seven days, we could have a drastic im- pact on our corals.
GD: But corals take a long time to grow and mature. You were talking about larvae and brooding and I guess hatching and the early stage. What about well established corals. What effect would it have on them? DV:Te University of Miami has supposedly done some preliminary studies showing that the dispersant impacts the adult corals. We had a proposal in with the state of Florida supplied by BP to study just that. Te effect of dispersants and oils, and oils mixed with dispersants on live corals, that proposal was not picked to be funded, regretfully.
GD: Is there any way to get the funding to educate the oil industry, because without that education they are going to continue with what they consider normal practice. DV:We were very lucky to secure some emergency oil spill response funding from the Protect Our Reef Plate Plant Program. Its grant gives half the monies collected from reef plates to research education, con- servation, outreach. We do need some longer term funding to test many species of corals, including the adults, to see what the impact is. I would like to see research in developing a non-toxic or less toxic dispersant to fish and crustaceans and non-toxic or less toxic to coral.
GD: How involved will MOTE Marine laboratories be in the fol- low-up research? DV:We would like to be heavily in- volved, although we can only do re- search where there is funding to allow research to be maintained. We had some of these obtonimus underwater vehicles in the prime part of the spill to test, between the Dry Tortugas and the Keys’ portion where it connects with the main- land, if we had any oil in disper- sants. We were very lucky to show that oil did not come here in its Continued
KONK Life 15
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