[Coral-List] Coral Bleaching Observed on coral reefs in San Andres, Colombia
Billy Causey
Billy.Causey at noaa.gov
Wed Jul 13 15:15:07 EDT 2005
Greetings,
I apologize up front for any cross-postings.
I just returned to the Florida Keys (July 8) from an International
Advisory Board meeting with CORALINA in San Andres. On July 4th Martha
Prada and other CORALINA staff took Cheri Recchia, Jan Steffen and
myself snorkeling on reefs off San Andres. While the Diadema population
appeared to be rather abundant and healthy, some of the corals were
showing signs of stress. Colonies of/ Millepora complanata /were
bleached .... with colonies ranging from fully bleached-out to colonies
that were partially bleached. While none of the other species of corals
were fully bleached, there was some paling observed.
One evening, CORALINA hosted a meeting with Seaflower MPA stakeholders
and I had a discussion with Valentino Duffis, a Fisher Advisor to
CORALINA. Mr Duffis said, "in his 25 years of fishing the San Andres
Archipelago, he had never witnessed the calm weather conditions for as
long as he has over the past few months." His observation was that
thermal stress was having an impact on the marine environment.
At an October 2004 meeting in the same area ... I observed rather
extensive coral bleaching on some of the shallow coral reefs around San
Andres. I believe I posted those observations at the time.
Jim Hendee .... how do we get a CREWS station in San Andres?
sincerely, Billy Causey
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