Reef damage in Delray Beach under investigation - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
By David Fleshler, Sun Sentinel7:16 p.m. EDT, March 20, 2013
The plan was to restore an eroded beach, but a barge's journey down the Palm Beach County coast ended up damaging a popular coral reef.
The barge, owned by Great Lakes Dredge and Dock, was being towed by tugboats from a beach restoration job at Lake Worth Inlet to another one in Delray Beach, when something went wrong and cables dragged along the ocean floor.
The Flower Garden Reef sustained damage across a 3-mile length, with barrel sponges sheared off and coral heads scraped. The incident is under investigation by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. It is unclear yet who is at fault, because the company had contracted out the towing job.
Great Lakes, based in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, released a statement this week saying it had hired a marine science company to assess the damage and begin restoration work.
"The cause of the damage to the reef and the responsible party continue to be investigated," the company said. "However, regardless of the cause, Great Lakes profoundly regrets that this damage occurred at all. Great Lakes is cooperating fully with the regulatory agencies involved."
South Florida has been busy with beach renourishment projects in the past few months, some planned long before, others in response to erosion from the region's late-October brush withHurricane Sandy. The Delray Beach project involves dredging sand from the ocean floor and spreading it along the coastline.
Environmentalists have often been critical of such projects for their potential harm to reefs, both from accidents such as the one under investigation and from their potential to smother reefs with silt, which can block vital sunlight from reaching corals. Shallow-water corals such as the ones fringing South Florida's coast, contain photosynthetic algae, from which they draw energy, and these algae need sunlight.
"The coral reefs in this area are already stressed," said Ed Tichenor, director of Palm Beach County Reef Rescue, which has been monitoring the beach restoration projects. "These additional impacts overturning corals and the additional silt in the water are stresses this reef can't handle."
Beaches are vital to the region's environment and economy, serving essential functions for sea turtles, shorebirds and the tourist industry. Reefs are, too, supporting an abundance of life and generating billions of dollars in revenue from fishing, diving and snorkeling.
The Flower Garden Reef, located about a mile off shore, is popular with local dive boats. The damage was originally discovered by two dive boat operators and a local scientist. The state's environmental department was notified of the damage March 3. Since then, agency divers surveyed the site.
According to the state, as tugboats towed the barge and dredging equipment 18 miles from Lake Worth Inlet to Delray Beach, cables dragged along the reef, damaging sponges, hard corals and soft corals.
"The assessment of this injury is ongoing, therefore we do not know how much reef was damaged," said agency spokeswoman Mara Burger.
Such assessments can take six months to a year and in a few cases, even longer as the department and the responsible party conduct damage assessments, work out a restoration plan and decide on costs, she said. At the same time, the company could face penalties under the Coral Reef Protection Act of 2009, ranging from $150 to $3,000 per square meter of damage, for a total not to exceed $250,000.
Great Lakes declined to release the names of the tugboat operators. The company has extensive beach restoration experience in Florida, including projects in Deerfield Beach, Hillsboro Beach and Boca Raton.
Spokeswoman Jeanmarie Ferrara said the company wanted to move quickly on the restoration without waiting for a final determination of who was responsible. The company hired CSA Ocean Sciences to do the work, and has already collected displaced barrel sponges to be reattached, she said.
The company said the damage across the reef is patchy, as opposed to one long area, which means the healthy corals that remain can produce larvae to repopulate the areas that were scraped.
By David Fleshler, Sun Sentinel7:16 p.m. EDT, March 20, 2013
The plan was to restore an eroded beach, but a barge's journey down the Palm Beach County coast ended up damaging a popular coral reef.
The barge, owned by Great Lakes Dredge and Dock, was being towed by tugboats from a beach restoration job at Lake Worth Inlet to another one in Delray Beach, when something went wrong and cables dragged along the ocean floor.
The Flower Garden Reef sustained damage across a 3-mile length, with barrel sponges sheared off and coral heads scraped. The incident is under investigation by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. It is unclear yet who is at fault, because the company had contracted out the towing job.
Great Lakes, based in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, released a statement this week saying it had hired a marine science company to assess the damage and begin restoration work.
"The cause of the damage to the reef and the responsible party continue to be investigated," the company said. "However, regardless of the cause, Great Lakes profoundly regrets that this damage occurred at all. Great Lakes is cooperating fully with the regulatory agencies involved."
South Florida has been busy with beach renourishment projects in the past few months, some planned long before, others in response to erosion from the region's late-October brush withHurricane Sandy. The Delray Beach project involves dredging sand from the ocean floor and spreading it along the coastline.
Environmentalists have often been critical of such projects for their potential harm to reefs, both from accidents such as the one under investigation and from their potential to smother reefs with silt, which can block vital sunlight from reaching corals. Shallow-water corals such as the ones fringing South Florida's coast, contain photosynthetic algae, from which they draw energy, and these algae need sunlight.
"The coral reefs in this area are already stressed," said Ed Tichenor, director of Palm Beach County Reef Rescue, which has been monitoring the beach restoration projects. "These additional impacts overturning corals and the additional silt in the water are stresses this reef can't handle."
Beaches are vital to the region's environment and economy, serving essential functions for sea turtles, shorebirds and the tourist industry. Reefs are, too, supporting an abundance of life and generating billions of dollars in revenue from fishing, diving and snorkeling.
The Flower Garden Reef, located about a mile off shore, is popular with local dive boats. The damage was originally discovered by two dive boat operators and a local scientist. The state's environmental department was notified of the damage March 3. Since then, agency divers surveyed the site.
According to the state, as tugboats towed the barge and dredging equipment 18 miles from Lake Worth Inlet to Delray Beach, cables dragged along the reef, damaging sponges, hard corals and soft corals.
"The assessment of this injury is ongoing, therefore we do not know how much reef was damaged," said agency spokeswoman Mara Burger.
Such assessments can take six months to a year and in a few cases, even longer as the department and the responsible party conduct damage assessments, work out a restoration plan and decide on costs, she said. At the same time, the company could face penalties under the Coral Reef Protection Act of 2009, ranging from $150 to $3,000 per square meter of damage, for a total not to exceed $250,000.
Great Lakes declined to release the names of the tugboat operators. The company has extensive beach restoration experience in Florida, including projects in Deerfield Beach, Hillsboro Beach and Boca Raton.
Spokeswoman Jeanmarie Ferrara said the company wanted to move quickly on the restoration without waiting for a final determination of who was responsible. The company hired CSA Ocean Sciences to do the work, and has already collected displaced barrel sponges to be reattached, she said.
The company said the damage across the reef is patchy, as opposed to one long area, which means the healthy corals that remain can produce larvae to repopulate the areas that were scraped.
