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Comments Regarding the Sierra Club statement The Global Coral Reef Alliance support the efforts to the Sierra Club to prevent further damage to Southeast Florida's severely damaged coral reef, mangrove, and seagrass ecosystems, and the fisheries, recreational benefits, and shore protection that they uniquely provide. Every time they dredge out Port Everglades, the resuspended sediment damages the coral reef communities that are recovering on both sides of the ship channel. The corals south of the shipping channel have been badly affected by algae and bacteria slime overgrowth because of the sewage outfall in Hollywood, but the corals north of the channel are the most important recovering coral reef in South Florida, with large populations of the endangered staghorn coral, and smaller populations of endangered elkhorn coral: http://globalcoral.org/reef_protection_in_broward_count.htm Every time reef that permits are issued in Broward County to damage more corals, large sums of money are given to Nova University and selected consultants for "mitigation", which usually consists of breaking off living corals, gluing or cementing the corals onto concrete or rocks dumped into the water, and watching them die while claiming that a new "resilient" coral reefs will spring up on them. This fraudulent cycle of permitted reef damage "justified" by fake "restoration" has never been properly examined. All of these past "mitigation" projects should be properly studied to see how much of what was lost they have really replaced, before new ones are funded with taxpayer's money! Thomas
J. Goreau, PhD
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