Algae-Fouled Reefs @ Fort Myers May Be Hurting Fish Numbers

[hatrack]

Shocked, shocked I tell you!

A red grouper bellied down in a crevice at an unnamed and virtually unknown artificial reef 12 miles off Lee County on Tuesday. The reef's concrete — now clogged with algae — held a fraction of its former population. At the same time, 30 miles offshore, another fraction of a former fish population swirled around the shipwreck Bay Ronto, which was also covered with algae.

County scientists think these sites are indicative of negative changes in local fish habitat. In June 2003, the county's Marine Program sank an experimental artificial reef specifically designed to attract red grouper. A year later, scientists documented thousands of fish from 23 species. But in October 2005, the site was a marine ghost town, victim of recent red tides.

On Tuesday, county marine biologist Chris Koepfer and senior environmental specialist Justin McBride counted 18 species of fish, but few individual fish. As disturbing as lower fish numbers was the algae growing on the reef material — algae in itself is not bad; too much can choke a habitat.

"The fish populations are starting to rebound," Koepfer said. "But algae is covering everything. The soft corals and colonial tunicates are gone, so you don't see a lot of fish. A lot of the stuff that red grouper eat — belted sandfish, gobies and crustaceans — are gone because there's no habitat.

EDIT

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060712/NEWS0105/607120440/1075

[Strelnikov_]

1. Good News. Just 90 Million More Years To The Next Oil Boom

Venezuela’s great oil wealth springs from a happy circumstance, some 90
million years ago, when the continents of North and South America began to
move apart at a time of intense global warming. Algal growths proliferated,
poisoning the seas and giving rise to vast quantities of organic material that sank
to the stagnant depths of the opening rifts.