1,000 Healthy Corals Displaced as Dredging Continues Around Miami Port

[iluvtheocean]

Around 1,000 healthy corals have been displaced as dredging projects continue around the port of Miami.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the dredging project is 35 percent complete and will most likely finish no later than July 2015.

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Researchers seeking more time to save an underwater field of coral in a Miami channel were denied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on June 6.

"Taxpayers would be paying $50,000 to $100,000 a day to keep that dredge on standby and that's not happening," said Susan Jackson, a corps spokeswoman, according to Reuters.

The channel is being deepened to 50 feet in hopes of attracting the larger cargo shops expected to pass through the expanded Panama Canal once it's completed.

Researchers started daily dives to collect coral in and around the dredge site on May 26 after Illinois-based dredging contractor Great Lakes Dredge & Dock finished relocating approximately 900 more mature corals to an artificial reef as required by the Army Corps of Engineers.

"We've been able to remove more than 2,000 corals in less than two weeks and if we had another two weeks we'd get thousands more," said Colin Foord, a marine biologist and co-founder of Miami-based Coral Morphologic, which is part marine biology lab and part art and music studio, according to Reuters.

Though dredging work resumed over the weekend, scientists said environmental studies underestimated the kinds and number of corals living near the channel.

"We now have another set of eyes in the water looking at what's down there and we want to be sure what was required in the permit was done," said Rachel Silverstein, executive director of the Biscayne Bay Waterkeepers, according to Reuters.

The Biscayne Bay Waterkeepers unsuccessfully sued the state in 2011 in hopes of stopping the $150 million project.

Coral is a stationary animal that slowly grows on seafloors over tens and even hundreds of years.

The University of Miami researchers believe that the corals living in waters just south of Miami Beach could offer clues as to how the world's disappearing coral can survive in changing oceans.

"The corals in the disturbed environments are the most pre-adapted and might be the most valuable in terms of saving them," said Andrew Baker, a marine biology professor at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, according to Reuters.

 

[mjrob]

Aaaaaaarrrggghhhhh. Maybe I'm wrong but, to me, this is akin to finding an ancient burial ground on a construction site. Everything halts--costs be damned--and the relics and remains are either carefully and respectfully relocated or the project simply stops. And in this case, we're talking about living things whose numbers are quickly dwindling. This is a chance to save countless thousands of corals.

Bigger ships. Yeah, I get it. Just another case of screwed-up priorities with devastating but avoidable impact. And the COE's response is typically arrogant. Thanks so much, US government.

 

[SavageRon]

"Quick; we're in a hurry to **** up the planet a little bit more.
We can't wait here, because we have an ancient burial ground to bulldoze next, and then an old growth forest that desperately needs destruction. "

Did someone on site say that quote, or did I make it up??
It's probably at about 50/50 odds right now, but we'll see what my bookie says later.

 

[sportxlh]

I wonder who fell asleep at the switch on this one (Army Corps, the researches and scientists mentioned in the article, Great Lake Dredge, Coral Morphologic, etc.)??? This port expansion and dredging project has been on the docket for a very very loooooooooooooong time and has been extensively covered in the press. It should not be a surprise to anyone that work has commenced. It's hard to conceive that at the last minute some scientist or environmentalist is crying foul because the coral needs to be collected and relocated. Why wasn't the collection and relocation process begun 4 or 5 years ago? Like anyone else on SB, I'd like to see the coral taken care of: I just find it incredible that it hasn't already happened.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

I wonder who fell asleep at the switch on this one (Army Corps, the researches and scientists mentioned in the article, Great Lake Dredge, Coral Morphologic, etc.)??? This port expansion and dredging project has been on the docket for a very very loooooooooooooong time and has been extensively covered in the press. It should not be a surprise to anyone that work has commenced. It's hard to conceive that at the last minute some scientist or environmentalist is crying foul because the coral needs to be collected and relocated. Why wasn't the collection and relocation process begun 4 or 5 years ago? Like anyone else on SB, I'd like to see the coral taken care of: I just find it incredible that it hasn't already happened.

I'm not involved with this project and the company I work for did not chase the PortMiami mitigation job, but the contractors selected to move the corals and build the offshore mitigation reef were only selected in the spring of last year. This has been on the docket for, as you said, a long time ... but the USACE tends to move with, as Carl Hiaasen put it, the speed of a tortoise on Ambien. In order to get the corals moved you first have to establish what the area to be dredged is, then you have to find a suitable area to put them in, design the mitigation reef, get the permits to move them, find out how many there are to be moved and where they are, etc. There's also the matter that the mitigation plan had to be expanded because of lawsuits filed by environmental groups. That process can easily eat up years of time - I've seen a relatively simple wetlands mitigation project get knocked back a full year because one Miami-Dade County agency had issues with arsenic contamination in one section of the site being just a hair above soil cleanup target levels (that contamination being pre-existing; we were basically taking some old homestead/farmland sites in the East Everglades Expansion Area and returning them to natural wetland grade).

 

[luscioman]

I have met a few divers that have the "permit" to move the corals. I have been told by them they are rushing to move them before that area is demolished with dynamite. I know of many people that would volunteer to help with this if asked.