I first heard about coral bleaching from Billy Causey, the manager of
the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. We were sitting in his
office deep in a 67-acre hardwood hammock on Marathon Key. It is a
place where ospreys, egrets, cormorants, fat black snakes, hermit
crabs, parrot fish, even an old tropical fish collector like Billy can still
find refuge from the Kmart mall sprawl out on Route 1. Thickset with
iron-gray hair and sea-gray eyes, Causey, who moved to the Keys in
1973, sounds like some Old Testament Jeremiah as he recalls the grad-
ual decline of the reef during the years he’s been here.
Unfortunately, while among the most diverse of marine habitats,
the world’s massive coral colonies are also fragile structures, living
within a narrow range of clarity, salinity, low-nutrient chemistry, and
temperature.
CHAPTEREIGHT
Australia, Florida, and Fiji:
Reefs at Risk
David Helvarg
127Fig 9: Minden Pictures/ Fred Bavendam