“Throughout the ’70s we saw various problems but constantly
clear waters with typical hundred-foot visibility,” Causey recalls.
“In 1979, we had a warm water spell and big vase sponges started
dying,” he continues. “In June of 1980 we had a pattern of slick calm
weather and thousands of fish were killed. This was the first signal to me
that things were tilting the wrong way. Then in 1983, with an explosion
of onshore development, there was an urchin die-off. In 1984, there was
another doldrums and the reefs bleached down to Key West. Maybe five
percent of the coral died. In May of 1986, when we had hardly seen black
band disease [characterized by dark bands of dead coral on otherwise
healthy specimens], I went out to take a picture of it. I saw four-dozen
massive outbreaks within an area about 400 feet in length.”
Causey pauses to listen to a passing bird cawing over the still,
aquamarine waters of the Gulf a few yards away. Further north I have
noticed that the fringing waters of Key Largo have taken on a greenish
lime Jello hue.
“In June of 1987 we got a slick calm,” he continues. “On July 13 we
went out and saw all the corals turning mustard yellow. Then they went
stark white. Then we began getting reports of similar bleaching in the
Caribbean and on the Indo/Pacific reefs and we realized something global
was going on. We began looking at this as the canary in the coal mine.
Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—
NOAA—was reporting 1987 as the hottest year on record and the 1980s
as the hottest decade.” These records would all fall in the 1990s.
The bad news multiplied, Causey says. “In 1990, we had the first big
losses linked to bleaching where the coral didn’t come back. We lost most
of our fire coral that year. There was another benchmark year in 1997,
with coral bleaching all around the Caribbean. Lots of living coral just
went away in 1998, a catastrophic bleaching event. But remote reefs in
the Pacific were also being lost, so it gave me a sense that this wasn’t an
isolated event—the result of our failure to act. There were back-to-back
severe bleaching in 1997 and 1998, then Hurricane George hit.”
Causey shakes his head, as if unwilling to believe his own unremit-
tingly bleak narrative. “You look at old photos and film of the reef and
you realize what was lost,” he says. “If you were lucky enough to be
here 20 or 30 years ago, you know.”
128 David Helvarg