Charlotte Terry Courtesy of Vero Beach Magazine, March & April 2000

Are coral reefs the planet's "canary in the coal mine"? Dr. Brian Lapointe, a marine scientist at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, thinks so, and that is why he is planning a trip to the Daintree tropical rain forest and Great Barrier Reef of Queensland, Australia.

"The planet is in trouble, and the coral reef, the ocean's most biologically diverse and sensitive ecosystem, is telling us we're making some bad decisions," he says. "This trip is not just an ecotour but an opportunity to spend time with Australian scientists and learn about the essence of coral reefs. We'll see all sorts of sea life and an amazing diversity of tropical reef fish and coral - far more species than one sees in the bigger Caribbean. Whereas in the Caribbean you might see tens of species of coral, on the Great Barrier Reef there are hundreds of species; it's one of the most diverse regions in the world."

Lapointe's trip will include the Low Isles, a small coral key off Port Douglas in northern Queensland. This was the site of the 1928-29 Great Barrier Reef expedition, the first detailed scientific study of a coral reef, carried out by the British Museum of Natural History. The trip also includes a week at Heron Island, where the University of Queensland maintains the largest research facility on the reef.

Brian Lapointe graduated from Palm Beach High School in 1969 and went on to Boston University, where he received his BS in biology. At the University of Florida he completed a master's in environmental engineering, then finished his Ph.D in marine biology at the University of South Florida. For several years he worked for Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts's, and helped develop the aquaculture program at Harbor Branch between 1973 and 1977. He joined the staff full-time in 1983, and now lives in Vero Beach with his wife Lee and four-year old son Sebastian.

One of the most pleasurable parts of his work, Lapointe says, is diving. He remembers diving around the Riomar worm reefs (reefs cemented together by worms) in the 1970's, when he first began working at Harbor Branch.

In a recent dive at the same location, accompanied by graduate student assistant Peter Barile, he was alarmed to see the explosion of sea urchins that had occurred in the past 20 years. The over-abundance of sea urchins, he explains, is most likely linked to excessive nutrient runoff, possibly from golf course fertilizers and septic tanks leaching nutrients from the residential area.

Local beach erosion may also have been influenced by the ecological changes occurring on this reef. Lapointe's recent studies in Negril, Jamaica, showed that nutrient-rich runoff has caused a shift away from the coral-dominated reef that protected and nourished the beach. The species of algae that now dominate the Jamacian reefs no longer nourish the beach and have contributed to a serious erosion problem at the island's resort areas.

Though Lapointe has done extensive reef studies around the world, South Florida remains closest to his heart.

"There is nothing anywhere in the world quite like the linked ecosystems of the Everglades, Florida Bay and the Keys." he says. "As a child and young adult I spent many wonderful hours diving, boating and fishing in those waters."

Because of his memories, Lapointe is amazed at what government agencies and Floridians have let happen to "some of the most beautiful country in the world." He likes to recall the warning of the late Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, who once remarked that "The Everglades is a test. If we pass it, we get to keep the planet." Lapointe fears we are in the midst of taking the test and failing it badly.

Fertilizer production in the last two decades, he explains, has doubled the amount of nitrogen available on Earth. "Little did we know when the industrial resolution began," he says, "that nitrogen enrichment of the atmosphere from fossil fuels would lead to fertilization of the oceans."

Lapointe believes that the nitrogen enrichment of the Everglades, Florida Bay and the reefs of Florida Keys is one of the biggest problems facing the state.

"This is especially true of the reefs in the Key's," he says. "They evolved over hundreds of millions of years in an environment that had clear water exceedingly low concentrations of dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus. The minute these nutrients appeared at increased concentrations, the balance between the coral and its competitor, algae, began shifting in favour of the faster growing algae."

Florida Bay, he says, is one of the worst examples in the world of excessive nutrients causing a proliferation of algae growth and coral die-off. The nutrient runoff from human activities in the South Florida watershed has extended beyond Florida Bay to impact the reefs of the /Keys, causing the coral cover on the best reefs to decrease from 80 percent in the 1970s to about five percent today.

"Over the last century we have greatly altered the nitrogen cycle in South Florida through drainage, top soil loss, fertilizer use, sewage pollution and the combustion of fossil fuels. All these sources have contributed to the nitrogen enrichment of South Florida's coastal waters, resulting in an environmental holocaust."

A number of years ago, Lapointe says, scientists suggested that the ecological problems of Florida Bay were due to too much salt in the water, which resulted in seagrass die-off and the release of nutrients form the decomposing plant material. These scientists thought that the dying seagrasses were the primary source of nutrients fostering the alga bloom. Despite not having scientific evidence to support this theory, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began a restoration program that pumped more nitrogen-rich water from the Everglades into the bay to reduce its salinity.

The result was "like adding fuel to the fire." As the nitrogen in the bay increased, the algae blooms grew exponentially, causing more seagrass to die off. This in turn resulted in higher turbidity and reduced light available to both the seagrasses and the coral. As the nutrient-rich water flowed from Florida Bay through the tidal channels of the Keys to the offshore coral reefs, coral diseases increased dramatically.

Lapointe believes that this decision represents one of the worst examples of coral-reef mismanagement in history. He has published numerous articles showing that the nutrient problems are due to polluted run-off from fertilizer, top soils and excess nutrients flowing down from the Everglades.

"The irony is that the Army Corps of Engineers did not recognize nitrogen as being a matter of concern for Florida Bay, even though nitrogen has been a primary concern in every other marine area around the world. Oceanographers have known about it for a hundred years!"

One of Lapointe's current projects, funded by NASA, involves researching the optical properties of South Florida's coastal waters. The goal of the program is to help NASA develop "smart" algorithms, so that the photographic images produced by satellites can be used to tell what kind of organisms are in the picture and how they relate to water quality.

The nutrients that are supporting the algae are also affecting the quality and quantity of the light reflected by the coastal waters, explains Lapointe. He is collaborating on the project with Drs. Charles and Clarice Yentsch, founders of the Bigelow laboratory for ocean Sciences in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, one of the top oceanographic research labs in the world.

"We know from our previous work that the amount of nitrogen in the water relates to the amount of coral and algae," Lapointe says. "Now we're looking at how the algae affects the quality of light."

To help prove his contention that reefs around the world are begin destroyed by the growth of alga, Lapointe has been conducting a study on Norman's Pond Cay in the Bahamas. There, he is examining the relative roles of the grazers (conch, parrotfish) in eating algae versus the nutrient runoff from this island in stimulating the growth of algae.

Lapointe explains that, on this particular Bahamian island, the nutrients could also be man-made because Norman's Pond Cay was used to farm pineapples and produce salt years ago. "Typically, what they would have done is not only fertilize the crops but also the salt ponds to create algae blooms on the bottom to seal them, which increases the evaporation and production of salt. We think that we may be seeing old fertilizers that have built up in this system and have resulted in long term nutrient-rich runoff. We identified Norman's Pond as a unique place to look at how nutrients and light interact to determine the optical properties of the coastal oceans."

Some bodies of water, Lapointe says, are so thick with algae that they become "black body absorbers," where the light goes in but doesn't come out. Florida Bay, thick with pea soup algae, has become one of these "optically dense" areas.

"The truth is that the coral reefs in South Florida are pretty much gone," Lapointe says. "And the entire Caribbean is in trouble because of the impact on water quality from widespread tourism, agriculture and other human activities. Satellite images already show that the Orinoco River in South America creates a plume that extends all the way across the eastern Caribbean to Puerto Rico."

According to Lapointe, this runoff has been exacerbated by deforestation of the South American rain forest and is a major contributor to the demise of the eastern Caribbean's coral reefs. Indeed, the Caribbean reefs, like those of South Florida, represent some of the most impacted reef regions in the world.

In comparison, the reefs in the Red Sea and offshore portions of Australia's Great Barrier Reef still have 80-90 percent coral cover and very low nitrogen levels.

"The Great Barrier Reef is so large you can see it from space," Lapointe says. "Reefs produce the largest natural structures on Earth - bigger than New York City or Los Angeles. They began evolving some 500 million years ago, take thousands of years to grow and should look the same today as they did 50 million years ago. When you dive on a coral reef, it's like going back in time."

Lapointe has recently become involved in another project that he hopes will capture the interest of corporate America. The project involves one of the smallest towns in America - Marineland, Florida (population:7), where the popular television series SeaHunt was filmed. Lapointe will help Jim Jacoby, of Jim Jacoby Development, Inc., design a zero-discharge development where the sewage and storm water runoff will have virtually no negative impact on the quality of the estuary and coastal ocean surrounding the renovated Marineland facility.

The two men plan to achieve this by using the latest technology in waste-water treatment, coupled with aquaculture (the cultivation of water plants and animals for human use) to recycle nutrients that would otherwise pollute the estuary. According to Lapointe, part of Jacoby's inspiration came from the book The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawkins.

"Hawkins talks about the need for corporate America to make a mid-course correction and foster development that is kinder and gentler to he Earth's vital ecosystem's," says Lapointe. "We need to get businesses to invest in environmental values instead of just looking at the bottom line, no matter what the cost to the environment. Jim Jacoby has given me hope that something great is going to happen at Marineland that will become a model for the rest of the country, setting an example of how things should be done.

"Hopefully, it will be one more step in our efforts to pass Marjorie Stoneman Douglas' 'Everglades test' and save the planet for future generations."

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