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DESIGNATION AND MANAGEMENT OF CRITICAL HABITAT May 27, 2006
NMFS Southeast Regional Office E-Mail: Acropora.Info@noaa.gov The entire reef system of Central and Northern Broward County, from Port Everglades to the Hillsboro inlet, needs to be officially declared Critical Habitat for Acropora immediately. This area contains some of the largest staghorn populations remaining anywhere in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic, and small populations of elkhorn, both scattered across the entire region. This area is of critical importance because these are probably the largest healthy stands of staghorn remaining in US waters. Because they form the northernmost large populations of this species they are of crucial importance as genetic reservoirs for the northward spread of corals as global warming accelerates in the near future. Amazingly, this astonishing coral reef, the only healthy reef in the continental US that you can swim to from the beach, has no protection of any kind. Incredible as it seems, federal, state, and county officials have approved all sorts of projects that will kill these corals unless they are protected, projects that include dredging, direct and indirect sewage discharges, compounded with failure to deal with the root causes of global warming and emerging diseases. Cry of the Water and the Global Coral Reef Alliance have led the efforts to map, describe, and protect these reefs against these threats for years. However all of our appeals for protection have been ignored by Federal, State, and County officials, in clear violation of the Coral Reef Protection Act. Evidence of this is provided in by doing a search on “Broward” for the many articles posted at www.globalcoral.org Now that these species have been formally declared to be threatened, it is crucial that these agencies immediately halt their ongoing approved plans to continue with dredging, filling, and sewage discharges in this region, which will eventually kill all the corals if they are not stopped immediately. My father, who was the world’s first diving marine scientist, was the first to describe the remarkable ecological zonation of the Caribbean Acropora and show that they are more sensitive to stress and algae overgrowth than any other corals in the region. In the 50 years that I have been diving all around the Caribbean, I have not seen another patch of staghorn as large as those in Broward in the last 25 years. This is a unique place, and the strongest protection of the entire reef ecosystem around it needs to be immediately enforced if it is to be saved. They therefore need application the most stringent water quality standards to protect them: dissolved inorganic nitrogen of less than 1.0 micromoles per liter (the Lapointe, Littler, Bell criterion), dissolved inorganic and organic phosphorus of less than 0.1 micromoles per liter (the Lapointe, Littler, Bell criterion), chlorophyll a of less than 50 parts per billion (the Bell criterion), temperatures less than one degree C above historic maximum monthly average values (the Goreau, Hayes criterion) and turbidity below 10 NTU (the Rogers criterion). These standards need to become official policy, rigorously monitored, and enforced. And a management plan for their protection and restoration needs to be implemented with the utmost urgency. One more hot year with unabated sewage discharges could kill them all in days to weeks. Sincerely yours, Thomas J. Goreau, PhD President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
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