Rising Ocean Temperatures Threaten Florida's Coral Reef
by Rick Lyman
KEY LARGO, Florida - If global warming summons images of polar bears clinging to shrinking ice floes, this is its face in the Florida Keys: a sun-dappled stretch of shallows along the turquoise reef line, where scientists painstakingly attach russet polyps of regenerated coral to damaged reefs.
"When I first came here snorkeling, in 1985, it was amazing, the forest of coral was so thick," said Bill Goodwin, a resource manager for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. "Just look now," he said, gesturing to the few small brown patches amid an elephant's boneyard of skeletal remains at the foot of the Carysfort light tower in the roiling Atlantic waters seven miles off Key Largo......More
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