An Interesting Read About Little Cayman Coral

[billinwilliamston]

I find this both interesting and somewhat encouraging. Do those of you who have experience with Little Cayman over the years agree with this assessment of the health of the coral?

Thanks.

Cayman Islands News

---------- Post added October 11th, 2013 at 10:37 AM ----------

Click on the link about 1/2 way down to view the actual study results.

 

[zenmedianetworks]

That's pretty encouraging, maybe the ocean knows what it's doing after all

 

[AggieDiver]

I can't say that I have noticed a big change over time...but for wahtever reason, I didn't seem to notice many areas that looked sick over the last two or three trips. It seemed like there used to be more areas that had alot of bleached coral and algae, but those have been very rare over the last couple of trips. They could be related to diving pressure or rotation of which sites see more divers as much as anything. But as was pointed out in the comments, the article is somewhat misleading in that they are seeing a recovery relative to post-1998 levels, but have not seen much recovery relative to pre-1998 levels. So the news is good, but perhaps not as good as it could be.

 

[caymaniac]

In the late 80's and early 90's the coral looked a lot better than it does now. I do believe it is looking a bit better and I also believe that the coral goes through a natural cycle of die offs through out the oceans. In the Bismark Sea the water temp averaged 90 last time we were there, the coral looked great , pristine even.