Failure to respond to a coral disease epizootic in Florida: causes and consequences

Abstract

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) was first observed in September 2014 near Virginia Key, Florida. In roughly six years, the disease spread throughout Florida and into the greater Caribbean basin. The high prevalence of SCTLD and high resulting mortality in coral populations, and the large number of susceptible species affected, suggest that this outbreak is one of the most lethal ever recorded. The initial recognition and management response to this catastrophic disease in Florida was slow, which delayed the start of monitoring programs and prevented coordinated research programs by at least two years. The slow management response was a result of several factors that operated concurrently. First, the Port Miami dredging project was ongoing during the coral disease epidemic and dredging rather than SCTLD was blamed by some managers and local environmental groups for the extreme coral losses reported in the project’s compliance monitoring program. Second, this blame was amplified in the media because dredging projects are intuitively assumed to be bad for coral reefs. Third, during this same time State of Florida policy prohibited government employees to acknowledge global warming in their work. This was problematic because ocean warming is a proximal cause of many coral diseases. As a result, the well-known links between warming and coral disease were ignored. A consequence of this policy was that the dredging project provided an easy target to blame for the coral mortality noted in the monitoring program, despite convincing data that suggested otherwise. Specifically, results from the intensive compliance monitoring program, conducted by trained scientific divers, were clear. SCTLD that was killing massive numbers of corals throughout Florida was also killing corals at the dredge site – and in the same proportions and among the same suite of species. While eradication of the disease was never a possibility, early control measures may have slowed its spread or allowed for the rescue of significant numbers of large colonies of iconic species. This coral disease outbreak has similarities to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and there are lessons learned from both that will improve disease response outcomes in the future, to the benefit of coral reefs and human populations.

Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Outbreaks in The Bahamas

“…These surveys will also help to identify which coral species could suffer local extinctions and provide recommendations to marine resource managers for the treatment of corals with antibiotics (Aeby et al, 2019;Neely et al, 2020) and the adoption of other measures such as coral rescue facilities (Zoccola et al, 2020;Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 2021), to prevent loss of these species locally. Furthermore, this study highlights the need for early detection and rapid response to disease outbreaks (Precht, 2021). In less than 5 months between AGRRA surveys of Grand Bahama in October 2019 and rapid assessments of reefs in March 2020, SCTLD had not only become established in the study area but had also spread over reefs along at least 75 km of the southern shoreline of Grand Bahama.…”

Prevalence of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease at El Seco, a Mesophotic Reef System off Vieques Island, Puerto Rico

“…Orbicellids are not listed as highly susceptible species to SCTLD (Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, 2018). Highly susceptible species include Pseudodiploria strigosa, Dendrogyra cylindrus, Meandrina meandrites, and Dichocoenia stokesii (Precht et al, 2016;Alvarez-Filip et al, 2019;Weil et al, 2019;Precht, 2021). However, Meiling et al (2021) observed regional differences in the species response to SCTLD for shallow-water reefs.…”

Education and Research: A Symbiosis to Better Understand a Novel Coral Disease

“…The reality is that SCTLD is not likely to be the last highly virulent coral disease to strike a reef system and a better understanding of how physiologic stress impacts coral immunity might lead to predictors that could be used in monitoring projects. Quicker response times to a coral disease outbreak could assist with mitigating the impact and prevent spread (Precht, 2021). Utilizing more citizen science through uploading photos/video to a central database could help, but one issue is that experts in the field have limited time for analyzing this type of data.…”

“…A number of environmental factors have been investigated concerning the emergence of the disease, which include increased sea surface temperatures (SSTs), increased turbidity from a concurrent dredging project (Miller et al, 2016;Gintert et al, 2019;Precht, 2021), and eutrophication (Dougan et al, 2020). Eutrophication from nutrient run off in the South Florida region, may have led to a reduction in immune function making corals susceptible to infection (Dougan et al, 2020).…”