Word: reefs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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State crews will monitor the Breakers reef, a popular diving spot, next week, weather-permitting, in order to curtail private divers from entering the damaged area and flipping and moving corals. Those divers may believe they are doing good but such movement may actually further damage the reef and inhibit government restoration efforts. Sponges should be left to recover alone; but damaged brain, maze, great star and other hard corals will have to be cemented in placed at their old location. Such hard corals are so sensitive and take decades to grow back, at a rate of a few centimeters...
Aside from providing homes for fish life and plants, coral reefs also produce billions of dollars in related eco-tourism and thousands of jobs in South Florida. They are also a buffer for beach erosion, a problem exacerbated by each new oceanside high-rise condo, as well as the storms and hurricanes that have battered Florida over the last four years. A joint federal and state study released in 2001 showed the reef-related economy - including money spent by eco-tourists for diving, chartering boats and the like - resulted in a $4 billion industry and more than 35,000 jobs...
Nevertheless, the reefs are declining because of human activity. A 2008 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that half of the U.S. reef ecosystem is in poor or fair condition and it foresees no improvement in the future. "Reefs all over the world and in the U.S. are suffering," says Dr. Richard Dodge, dean of Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center in Dania Beach, Fla. Vessel-related damage continues to be a big problem, and the two latest incidents are just "one more nail in the coffin...
What makes the latest damage to the reefs so heartbreaking is that the condition of south Florida's reef ecosystem seemed to be improving this year, if ever so slightly. The state seemed to be doing its share to safeguard the natural treasure. Lawmakers, for example, agreed to a long-term timeline to prohibit water utilities from dumping partially-treated sewage into the ocean. Federal and state agencies also finally moved a commercial ship anchorage that had caused years of sustained reef damage off Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale...
...have a detrimental impact on sea life around the world, with more and more coral threatened with extinction. In 2006, the staghorn and elkhorn corals, prevalent along South Florida waters, were listed as threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act (Staghorn coral is present in the Breakers reef, but it is not believed to have been damaged this time around...