Florida - Thursday August 3, 2023: The unusually warm sea temperatures off the southern Florida Coast this summer have already caused coral bleaching to set in around the Florida Keys.
Average annual summer sea temperatures in south Florida generally range from 74 to 88⁰F. However temperatures over 93 degrees have been recorded in recent weeks, including one reading over 100.
"So far, we’ve seen bleaching from Key Largo to Key West. And likewise, colleagues in Biscayne Bay are starting to see the coral bleach and pale there," said Shelly Krueger, a Marine Biologist with the University of Florida who serves as the Extension Agent down in the Florida Keys. “ And it isn’t just the corals, it’s also the sea fans, and the sponges, and all of these animals are also suffering from this marine heat wave," she said.
Coral can survive a few weeks once bleaching has set in, but the biggest concern says Krueger is how early its begun. “That is the concern, just that how early it started, and how warm the water is already, and the fact that the relief, really, isn’t going to come until the end of September." And Kruger has no doubt what the cause of it is. “The driver of this marine heat wave is higher temperatures caused from climate change and global warming.”
A massive effort is now underway to save a variety of coral species for replanting elsewhere. “All of the coral restoration agencies, the state agencies, like FWC, they are all moving the nursery corals to land based facilities so that they can survive this heat wave.”
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection Southeast Florida Action Network is encouraging divers, and others to report instances of coral bleaching to SEAFAN.net.
Learn more about Shelly's work on coral bleaching on her UF/IFAS blog at: blogs.ifas.ufl.edu.