[Coral-List] Evidence that ocean warming has caused most Caribbean, coral loss
Eugene Shinn
eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu
Fri May 5 10:31:40 EDT 2017
The warming oceans discussions have certainly been interesting and diverse.
I like ULfs “umbrella research” approach to the ocean pollution problem
as it relates to coral reefs and covers most everything. We had that
approach in mind (we didn’t call it that) at least 20 years ago when we
proposed that Caribbean-wide marine diseases and coral die-offs were
somehow related to the increasing flux of African dust. All the
individual pollutants environmental researchers have recognized are
contained in the millions of tons of soil dust that blow over from
northern Africa and shower down on vast areas of the Atlantic each year.
A high school student recently performed a simple award winning
experiment. She added three different quantities of that dust to three
different aquaria containing /Acropora cervicornis/ and all three
concentrations caused death in two days. Corals in the control aquarium
remained healthy. It’s called /a proof of concept experiment./ Most good
scientists of course would like to know exactly which of the thousands
of ingredients in the dust caused the corals to die. I certainly would.
Unfortunately the list of ingredients is so long it would require many
years and millions of dollars to isolate and determine the toxicity of
all the individual components. And like Ulf says it may require a
combination of several to have an effect. So what is in the dust? We can
start with the Periodic table. Most everything on the Periodic table is
likely present in varying amounts. For sure we know there is Mercury,
Arsenic, Phosphorous, Copper, Silica, Iron, Aluminum, Beryllium,
Beryllium 7, Lead, Lead 210, Calcium, Uranium and on and on. Mixed in
are the man-made organic chemical pesticides including DDT, (they still
use it in Africa) and don’t forget the Bacteria and Fungal spores (about
200 have been cultured and identified and some (even after all those
years) have been cultured from the African dust Darwin collected form
the deck of the Beagle around 1838. There are even shriveled up Rotifers
(put some of the dust in a glass of fresh water and pretty soon you will
see them swimming around) and of course there are viruses. Who knows how
many but certainly they far outnumber the microbes. It would take many
years of research and even more money to identify the viruses and don’t
forget the recently discovered microbes that live permanently in the
atmosphere but shower down when it rains. So for now, I think we will
just have to be content with more high school experiments to proved Ulfs
Umbrella research hypothesis and we haven’t even touched on sewage and
Oxybenzone. Now add it all to a warming ocean and we have plenty to
think about. Gene
--
No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
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E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
College of Marine Science Room 221A
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158
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