[Coral-List] Lionfish update from St Croix

[Frank Galdo Jr]

Hi Melissa, just wanted to give some input as to the bleaching here in the USVI 
this year.  We  actually have seen fairly widespread major bleaching these past 
few months,  especially on the shallow reefs.  It could have been much worse 
too, if it had  not been for the good timing of the storms which came through 
the area  this season.  If you check out the sea-surface temperature graph for  
this year:  
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/current/sst_series_usvirgin_cur.html     
, you'll see just how close we came to having some serious problems  this year, 
but even so, we definitely didn't escape unscathed.  


Around St Thomas, we were seeing reefs where a majority of corals were  showing 
signs of bleaching.  Fortunately, now that the waters have  cooled, we're seeing 
a lot of color returning to the reefs, but we're not out of  the woods yet, as 
much of the coral loss of 2005-06 occurred from  disease outbreaks in the year 
following the bleaching episode.

-Frank Galdo Jr
MMES Program
University of the Virgin Islands
St Thomas, USVI
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 07:31:11 -0800 (PST)
From: MelissaE Keyes <melissae.keyes at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Coral-List] Lionfish update from St. Croix, US Virgin
    Islands
To: coral coral <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Message-ID: <871638.17098.qm at web55407.mail.re4.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Hello, Listers,

Just thought I'd drop in and report that?our Lionfish population?seems to be 
growing.? The first few were observed in 2008.? There was a Lionfish Derby this 
past weekend, and in one day more than fifty were caught by a?13 recreational 
divers.? Most were juveniles, < 7cm.? There is an organized group of 
recreational divers here?with a goal of keeping the population less than fifteen 

per hectare.? 


I haven't been diving in nearly a year.? But as to bleaching this year, I didn't 

report because the water here didn't get hotter than the normal, 28c, so I doubt 

there was any or much bleaching of what little coral there is left.??

Cheers,

Melissa~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Melissa E. Keyes
St. Croix, 
U.S.Virgin Islands


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