This sucks

Winter chill takes toll on Florida Keys coral

Reporting from Miami - January’s bitter cold may have wiped out many of the shallow-water corals in the Florida Keys.

Scientists have only begun assessments, but initial reports are bleak. The damage could extend from Key Largo through the Dry Tortugas islands west of Key West, a vast expanse that covers some of the prettiest and healthiest reefs in North America.

Given the depth and duration of the frigid weather, Meaghan Johnson, marine science coordinator for the Nature Conservancy, expected to see losses. But she was stunned by the devastation when she joined a dive team surveying reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The divers were looking for “bleaching,” a telltale indicator of temperature stress in corals.

Star and brain corals, large species that can take hundreds of years to grow, were as white and lifeless as bones, frozen to death, she said. Dead sea turtles, eels and parrotfish also littered the bottom.

“Corals didn’t even have a chance to bleach. They just went straight to dead,” Johnson said. “It’s really ecosystem-wide mortality.”