[Coral-List] Lionfish update from St Croix
Frank Galdo Jr
tofrg at yahoo.com
Tue Dec 7 13:02:58 EST 2010
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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