This story was originally published in Grist, and is reproduced as part of Climate Desk’s collaboration. The Gulf of Mexico is known for its oil, but it also has something else. The Flower Garden is one of the world’s healthiest corals reefs, nestled among offshore oil platforms about 150 miles south of Houston.
[[{“value”:”This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced these as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Although the Gulf of Mexico is renowned for its oil, much less is known about it. Tucked among offshore oil platforms, about 150 miles from Houston, is one of the healthiest coastal reefs in the world: the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
Coastal researchers who have been to the Flower Garden Banks speak with awe in their voices when they describe it. ” When you look out, it can be almost disorienting because there’s so much coral”, said Michelle Johnston, superintendent of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
Scientists are frantically studying and conserving this amazing coral reef in the most unlikely of places as reefs around the world continue to bleach at alarming rates. ” We have these magical underwater places, ]and yet they are ] completely surrounded by the oil and gas industry”, Johnston said.
East Flower Garden Bank’s breathtaking view shows the marine cover at an all-time high of 80 %.
Emma Hickerson/Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary/NOAA
It is important to understand the region’s history in order to understand how both can exist in such close proximity. The ocean was drying up, almost 190 million years ago, leaving behind a vast plain of salt. That dried-up layer of salt was buried deep in the earth over the course of time.
And later, a new body of water—the Gulf of Mexico—formed high above it. The layer slowly rose to the surface, pushing the earth above it, and bringing up large oil deposits from the ground because salt is less compact than the surrounding rock. Slowly, this shift created tremendous marine mountains known as” salt domes”. You can see that many of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil drilling sites are located on those similar marine mountains when you look at a map of the Gulf of Mexico today.
” You can see oil and gas platforms in every direction when you look around from the dive boat.”
A few of these mountains were so large that the sunlight could only pass through the water to reach them. And almost 10, 000 years ago, coral polyps latched onto the peaks and started to grow. The marine mountaintops are now the Flower Garden Banks.
Because the reef is but far away from the shore, it has been shielded from numerous dangers, including maritime pollution and overfishing. The water below is roughly as cool as corals can tolerate, effectively shielding the Flower Garden Banks from global warming because of its depth and north latitude. For instance, in the summer of 2023, the distinctive geology of Flower Gardens made it possible for it to perform better than the others while another reefs throughout the Caribbean were being ravaged by heat stress and bleaching.
However, the area has also become a significant hub for onshore oil drilling thanks to this particular geology.
When you’re onshore diving at the Flower Gardens, you can see oil and gas platforms from the dive boat in every direction, Johnston said. So there’s all of this industry happening in this picturesque location.
For now, the reef has thankfully avoided any catastrophic oil spills, but that does n’t mean that oil has n’t left its mark. In fact, the legacy of oil extraction, carbon emissions, and climate change are very actually etched into the painful skeletons of the corals themselves.
” I think of that skeletal material as a small time capsule”, said Amy Wagner, a scientist who studies corals to find clues about Earth’s past.
Wagner and a team of scientists were looking for Siderastrea siderea, a very particular type of marine, when she was a graduate student in 2005 when they visited Flower Garden Banks. ” They only look like a bunch of rocks on the bottom”, she said.
The team flew down 78 feet, to the peaks of these old mountaintops, and drilled a nearly 6- foot- much core of this slow- growing species of coral—a 250- year record of pollution, climate change, and even world events. ” You start to drill in and, particularly in that first drilling, you’re getting the tissue layer of the coral”, Wagner said. ” And you end up having a lot of fish come in, because it’s completely food, right”?
Amy Wagner’s team drills a sample from the Flower Garden Banks in 2005.
Amy Wagner and John Halas ‘ photos are courtesy of them
After hours of drilling, they patched up the hole and swam the 6- foot- much core to the surface. They x-rayed the core samples and split open them up in the lab. ” They’re like trees”, Wagner said. You can go back in time and count the tree rings. These monthly bands are produced by corals.
The living coral organism uses the nutrients and minerals it extracts from the seawater to create a fresh growth band each year. Basically, whatever’s in the seawater makes it into that year’s layer of coastal skeleton. ” So we have this long record of these small, small time capsules that are sort of locking in the ocean chemistry”, Wagner said.
Using a substantial- digital version of a dentist’s drill, Wagner and her colleague Kristine DeLong, a professor at Louisiana State University, collected a tiny bit of dust from each growth band. Finally, like detectives, they analyzed various elements in the dust for clues, looking at the variations in the coastal core over time.
It’s crucial to be able to manage and take care of those reefs, because they might be our next ones.
Just like humans, corals build their skeletons out of calcium. But often they make mistakes, accidentally getting look- alike elements from the seawater. Barium, one of those elements, is frequently employed as fluid in offshore oil wells. During the 1970s energy crisis, oil drilling boomed in the Gulf of Mexico. And Wagner and DeLong saw that spike in the coral’s barium levels: When oil prices crashed, production decreased, and thus did the barium.
This marine core contains some other histories that scientists can see etched in. They can see the rise in fertilizer pollution from the Mississippi River by looking at nitrogen. They can see the rise of nuclear weapons tests during the Cold War by looking at irradiated carbon.
And the corals also tell the story of how fossil fuels are changing the climate—in the words of one scientist, “recording their personal demise”. To see how, it’s important to know that carbon atoms are n’t all exactly the same. Depending on how many neutrons are present in each carbon atom, they really come in a few various weights. A carbon atom with seven neutrons is referred to as “heavy carbon,” while a carbon atom with six neutrons is referred to as “light carbon.” Plants prefer to use the gentle carbon for photosynthesis. But, inside of a plant, the carbon atoms tend to be a little bit lighter than those, say, inside of a volcano.
Fossil fuels come from ancient plants, which are full of sunshine carbon. The carbon atoms in our atmosphere are gradually becoming lighter as fossil fuel emissions rise.
As the world burns more fossil fuels, you can see this exact pattern manifesting in the corals: As the carbon in the band samples gradually decreases, the carbon in the corals gradually decrease. Because fossil fuel emissions warm the climate, they put reefs all over the world in danger.
Today, the Flower Garden Banks are still holding on, but they wo n’t be safe forever. The Flower Garden Banks could experience significant bleaching events starting in 2040. Climate models predict that we might be ready to spend an additional 15 to 20 years supporting the Flower Garden Banks, essentially double the window of time, if we can reduce our emissions at a more reasonable pace. That time would be crucial for the independent scientists and sanctuary staff who are working diligently to study and safeguard what might become one of the world’s next coral reefs.
” Going to a place like Flower Gardens, it’s like—these corals, they’re still pretty bloody healthy”, said DeLong. Being able to manage those reefs and take care of them is crucial because they might be the next ones we have.
Scientists at the Flower Garden Banks have just begun removing corals from the reef and storing them in an onshore marine lab. The hope is to gradually bank much marine here in case the worst occurs.
The Coral Rescue Lab at the Galveston, Texas-based Moody Gardens Aquarium houses coastal fragments from the Flower Garden Banks.
Jesse Nichols/Grist
” It is a terrible prospect”, Johnston said. Instead of ending up with nothing left, it’s better to be vigilant and invest in some things, like getting the corals to have died and bleached. I sincerely hope that nature will understand and adapt. I believe the issue is that the climate is altering so fast that there might not be time.
The Flower Garden Banks are a product of 10, 000 years of sluggish, steady growth, capturing annual snapshots of our world, in little millimeter- sized chapters. How long this reef’s historical undersea story will remain viable for how long will it need to survive.”}]] This article was originally published by Grist, and it is now available for viewing as a result of our Climate Desk collaboration. Although the Gulf of Mexico is a region known for its oil, it also has something less than expected. Tucked among offshore oil platforms, about 150 miles from Houston, is one of the healthiest coastal reefs in the world: the Flower Garden
This story was originally published in Grist, and is reproduced as part of Climate Desk’s collaboration. The Gulf of Mexico is known for its oil, but it also has something else. The Flower Garden is one of the world’s healthiest corals reefs, nestled among offshore oil platforms about 150 miles south of Houston.
inhoud is ingebed in de post. The text says, ” quote, quote, apostrophe, quote. apostrophe, quote.” quote, apostrophe, quote. apostrophe.” apostrophe, quote. I’m sorry, but the text provided is unclear and does not contain any meaningful information that can be paraphrased. The speaker paused, held a brief moment of silence.
