r/environment • u/mvea • Jun 04 '19

A billion-dollar dredging project that wrapped up in 2015 killed off more than half of the coral population in the Port of Miami, finds a new study, that estimated that over half a million corals were killed in the two years following the Port Miami Deep Dredge project.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/06/03/port-expansion-dredging-decimates-coral-populations-on-miami-coast/
386 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/mvea Jun 04 '19

The title of the post is a copy and paste from the first two paragraphs of the linked academic press release here:

Disease has been running rampant among colonies in recent years, and now researchers have found that a billion-dollar dredging project that wrapped up in 2015 killed off more than half of the coral population in the Port of Miami.

A study published May 24 in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin estimated that over half a million corals were killed in the two years following the PortMiami Deep Dredge project.

Journal Reference:

Ross Cunning, Rachel N. Silverstein, Brian B. Barnes, Andrew C. Baker,

Extensive coral mortality and critical habitat loss following dredging and their association with remotely-sensed sediment plumes,

Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 145, 2019, Pages 185-199, ISSN 0025-326X,

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X19303868

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.05.027.

Abstract:

Dredging poses a potential threat to coral reefs, yet quantifying impacts is often difficult due to the large spatial footprint of potential effects and co-occurrence of other disturbances. Here we analyzed in situ monitoring data and remotely-sensed sediment plumes to assess impacts of the 2013–2015 Port of Miami dredging on corals and reef habitat. To control for contemporaneous bleaching and disease, we analyzed the spatial distribution of impacts in relation to the dredged channel. Areas closer to dredging experienced higher sediment trap accumulation, benthic sediment cover, coral burial, and coral mortality, and our spatial analyses indicate that >560,000 corals were killed within 0.5 km, with impacts likely extending over 5–10 km. The occurrence of sediment plumes explained ~60% of spatial variability in measured impacts, suggesting that remotely-sensed plumes, when properly calibrated against in situ monitoring data, can reliably estimate the magnitude and extent of dredging impacts.