April 3

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Farm Nutrients Do Affect Coral Reefs

April 3, 2004

The March 22 letter by Chip Merriam of the South Florida Water Management District claims that nutrients do not affect coral reefs and that current plans to clean up the Everglades will improve the water quality of the reefs.

He is wrong on both counts.

The effects of very low levels of sewage and agricultural nutrients in over fertilizing coastal waters and causing massive blooms of algae and bacteria that smother and kill coral reefs are very clear here in South Florida, as well as many other places around the world, shown in recently published studies by Brian Lapointe and by myself. Here in Broward County reefs, dense bacterial slime and weedy algae cover dead corals around the sewage outfalls in expanding rings that reached record sizes last year.

Surface water quality in Southeast Florida has improved in recent years because sewage plant effluents that used to be pumped into the canals are now pumped deep underground. The "out of sight, out of mind" policy works only until these sewage effluents pour out of the offshore cracks in the rocks overlying the pumping zones. Around these submarine springs, gooey masses of bacteria are spreading over deep corals and rock, with last year the worst ever.

The solution is not to hide pollution underground and let it hit our reefs later from the other side. Nutrients should be absorbed and recycled on the land by making it greener, instead of continuing to pollute reefs, whether by ocean outflows, canal waters or from underground, turning our coral reefs into bacteria slime mats.

If we keep waste nutrients from over fertilizing the reefs, the algae and bacteria will die back and the reef and fisheries can start to recover. This is now happening near Key West after their surface sewage discharges ended.

Dr. Thomas J. Goreau, President, Global Coral Reef Alliance