A new source of eco-tourism for Jax? Who knew what lurks off our shores?
QuoteFeds consider protecting pristine deep-water reefs
SUN SENTINEL
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A few miles from the southeast Florida coast, at a depth of crushing pressure and frigid temperatures, lies an eerie world of snowy coral, undiscovered forms of life and rock towers thrusting through ink-dark water.
Although the deep ocean reefs of the southeastern United States rose before the pyramids, their existence had only been hinted at by geological evidence until ruggedly built submersibles reached them in the late 1990s. Now, before commercial fishing damages a still-pristine ecosystem, the federal government is considering protecting a stretch of ocean floor from the Florida Keys to North Carolina, an area six times the size of Yellowstone National Park.
The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council plans to vote in June on banning bottom trawls, bottom longlines and other destructive fishing gear across 23,000 square miles, an area thought to encompass the largest deep-water reef system in the world. Although elsewhere such reefs have been mown down by commercial fishing gear, the reefs being considered for protection have sustained little impact from human activities, and the council wants to act before any damage takes place.
"We want to protect these very fragile, vulnerable ecosystems that we know very little about," said Myra Brouwer, a biologist with the Fishery Management Council. "They grow very slowly, and they're thousands of years old."
More remote than the polar ice caps or the Himalayan peaks, the deep ocean has surrendered its secrets slowly. It took the use of submarine-hunting sonar, for example, for scientists in the 1950s to map out the oceans' submerged mountain ranges. And while they suspected the existence of reefs in the ocean depths, they only acquired the tools to study them with the development of deep-diving submersibles, multibeam sonar and remotely operated vehicles.
John Reed, senior scientist at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University, discovered many of the deep-water reefs off Florida riding the submersible Johnson-Sea-Link 2,500 feet below the surface, where no sunlight penetrates and the water temperature drops into the 30s. During undersea trips from Jacksonville to Miami, he counted about 400 coral mounds, one reaching a height of 400 feet, mostly composed of a delicately branched, snow-white coral called Lophelia pertusa. He saw eels, scorpion fish and several examples of the huge sixgill shark, a primitive species that hunts near the surface at night and spends the day in the depths.
During a dive off southeast Florida, he peered through the submersible's acrylic bubble as the craft inched toward the coast. Searchlights swept the black water, revealing only small fish and sandy bottom. But as the craft came within 15 miles of the hotels and condominium towers of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton, the ocean floor sloped sharply upward, in a rugged, rubble-strewn ascent of more than 1,000 feet.
At the top, about 900 feet below the surface, a lush undersea landscape of sea fans, black corals, sponges and other creatures covered the reef called the Miami Terrace. New species of fish, crab and coral have been found in these reefs, and scientists expect to find many more.
"We really don't understand a lot about the ecology of these deep-water reefs," Reed said.
I'm impressed. With all of the economic chaos drowning out any other federal activites, this is certainly a breath of fresh air. I really hope this moves forward.
The state could also do a LOT more with regards to preservation. Ideally, another "everglades" size expansion of the Oceola National Forrest to connect it with Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp. That is one massive chunk of land and is the headwaters of our aquifer system. Add to that the further expansion of the Everglades and the lands surrounding the Big Bend area.