Gidday Mate ! (fwd)

J. Charles Delbeek delbeek at hawaii.edu
Wed Mar 4 11:33:11 EST 1998


This message is from a friend of mine who lives in Bundaberg, Australia. I
thought the rest of the list might be interested in it.

J. Charles Delbeek M.Sc.
Aquarium Biologist 
Waikiki Aquarium

"The fact that my physiology differs from yours pleases me to no end." 
Mr. Spock


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 20:46:37 -1000
From: Jack Hayes <Tootsian at b130.aone.net.au>
To: "J. Charles Delbeek" <delbeek at hawaii.edu>
Subject: Gidday Mate !

> The coral reef here is a bloody disaster.  What isn't dead is bleached
so white from loss of algae that I think much of it will starve before it
comes good.  The sea temp reached 33 c at 15 meters depth at four mile
reef last month. We are getting South easters now bringing in cooler water
but it is still very hot. This is unprecedented. No one can remember
anything like this happening before. Dead and rooting sarcophytons litter
the spaces between the hard coral beds. The Dendro's in the river mouth
have survived but the inshore reef ones have all disappeared. There is a
great increase in coral trout numbers for some reason but they have
decimated the juvenile fish population.  The spear fishermen are the only
ones to benefit. I expect that it will be well into winter before the
coral is back to anything like it was. The bleaching is all over the
barrier reef I believe. 

My tank did get a bit hot causing the death of a leathery sarco and all
bar one of my Dendros has died of starvation. However it still looks a
picture and its fundamental biology seems to be working very well. I
have a pure white very short polyp goniopora in there now and its
beautiful. It looks like a miniature snow covered mountain range.

All for now.

Talk to u in a few weeks

Regards

John







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