This bulletin is the first quarterly bulletin provided by the Florida Dept of Environmental Protection – Coral Reef Conservation Program and Coral Reef Conservation Program. These bulletins will be Florida’s primary tool for communication to the wider community and will provide high-level updates on the SCTLD outbreak and response efforts with a focus on Florida.

Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) – DEP is working with dozens of partners from federal, state, and local agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities, and members of the community to investigate and solve this problem

Read the bulletin for more information on General Updates as well as Response Team efforts.

Conservation strategy for healthy reefs in Cozumel
The National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) in coordination with the three government orders, and in close alliance with the Cozumel Reef National Park’s Advisory Council, will maintain a temporary and partial suspension of activities to tourism and recreation of the Protected Natural Area (ANP), starting at the “Palancar” reef and covering the restricted use zone.

The Cozumel Reef National Park has available, as of October 7, eleven Reef complexes and the wreck “Felipe Xicotencatl” for tourist activities.

See Spanish Language Press Release.

Cozumel, Quintana Roo as of September 23, 2019

As part of the strategies for the attention to Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas, in Collaboration with the Advisory Council of this National Park, a temporary suspension will be implemented as of October 7, 2019, of underwater activities from the “Palancar” reef and the area of restricted use, which includes the reef “Colombia” and the site “El Cielo”.

Temporary suspension of activities is a positive and necessary action for the health of the reef. The objective of this strategy is to give rest to the best preserved sites of the National Park and contribute to its recovery before the progress of the SCTLD. At the same time, other actions are being taken to meet water quality standards within the National Park.

These actions are supported by the results of scientific and technical studies carried out in conjunction with the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology of the UNAM, with the Autonomous Metropolitan University, Campus of Iztapalapa, civil organizations and of CONANP itself. The strategy will be coordinated with the Secretary of the Navy (SEMAR), the Port Captaincy, the State Government of Quintana Roo, the City Council of Cozumel, and a close alliance with the Advisory Council of this Protected Natural Area.

The partial and temporary suspension of activities will be for tourist and recreational activities in the zone; remembering that according to studies conducted by the German Cooperation Agency (GIZ) 80% of the diving and snorkeling activity in Cozumel takes place within the National Park, which receives one million 800 thousand direct users per year; and that, on average, these visitors would be willing to pay 3,052 pesos per person on each trip to keep the reefs in better state of conservation. If no action was taken, missing attributes such as water transparency and biodiversity would cause Cozumel and its reefs to lose 12% of tourism per year, which is equivalent to one thousand 510 million pesos every 12 months.

Along this line of thought, to ensure that the conservation objectives of the area are met, the aforementioned sites will have supervision and surveillance, scientific monitoring and social communication actions, which include periodic meetings to assess the progress of the taken actions. It is important to note that the Cozumel Reef National Park has fourteen reef complexes for underwater activities, of which only three will have suspended activities. Eleven sites will still be available plus the wreck “Felipe Xicotencatl”.

Judy Lang, AGRRA scientist, joined experts from around the Caribbean region at a workshop in Key West, Florida, August 1-2, 2019 to share information on Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease. During the workshop, AGRRA’s Coral Disease Outbreak portal was presented to show how to record observations of the disease and submit survey information.

The following extract was prepared by Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute.

Key West, August 1, 2019. Experts from around the Caribbean region are meeting at the Eco-Discovery Center in Key West to share information on an emerging and unprecedented threat to Caribbean coral reefs posed by a coral disease first documented in Florida and now being reported at sites across the region.
Since 2014, the Florida Reef Tract has been severely impacted by a newly documented coral disease which scientists are calling “Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease” because it affects only hard stony corals and is characterized by the rapid loss of live coral tissue. The disease has rapidly spread across coral reefs from Palm Beach to the lower Florida Keys and in the last year has been reported elsewhere in the Caribbean, including in Mexico, Jamaica, Sint Maarten, the Dominican Republic, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands and Belize.
“Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease affects some of the slowest-growing and longest-lived reef-building corals, including the iconic brain corals, star corals and pillar corals,” explained Dr. Andy Bruckner, Research Coordinator at Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, where the meeting is taking place.
“Scientists from NOAA and the state of Florida, sanctuary managers and academic partners have been working to document the outbreak, identify causes and contributing factors, and develop treatments and interventions,” he added.
As the disease has begun to be reported in other parts of the Caribbean, experts from Florida are sharing their valuable knowledge with counterparts around the region to help them identify the disease and learn how to respond once it has been documented. The learning exchange includes 22 participants from 17 countries and territories of the Caribbean.
“The visitors will see first-hand how this disease has impacted Florida’s coral reefs. With local experts, they’ll learn about monitoring for and treating the disease and about local efforts to save this incredibly important ecosystem,” explained Dana Wusinich-Mendez from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program.
“The visitors are not only learning from Florida’s experience but are also sharing with their hosts and with each other. The gathering is an important opportunity to exchange information and experiences about the disease progression and status of response efforts in other affected countries.”

For more information, see Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute on Facebook.

Story published in ScienceNews by Cassie Martin, July 9, 2019

Off St. Thomas, the disease is moving faster and killing more corals than any disease before.

Divers monitoring coral reefs off St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands in January noticed something alarming: Big white lesions were eating into the colorful tissues of hundreds of stony corals. Some corals were dead by the next day — only their stark white skeletons remained. Others languished for up to two weeks. Within four months, more than half of the reef suffered the same demise.

What’s killing the corals is far from clear, but the prime suspect is stony coral tissue loss disease, sometimes referred to by its initials SCTLD or by the nickname “skittle-D.” This infection, discovered off Florida in 2014, is responsible for what some scientists consider one of the deadliest coral disease outbreaks on record.

Click to read more of this story.

Update of SCTLD In Southeast Florida, May 22, 2019.
Submitted by Brian Walker, Nova Southeastern University, Florida

Over the last few weeks in Southeast Florida, we may be seeing the SCTLD disease on Montastraea cavernosa (MCAV) spreading more rapidly than before, and now large Orbicella are getting reinfections and needing more re-treatments. We have many firebreak margins with amoxicillin treatments that have lost a lot of tissue within a week. The good news is the firebreaks are holding at the early (two weeks) stage.

On many of our MCAV, the tissue is sloughing off rapidly without a bleached tissue margin. See attached example in which the disease crossed our firebreak and spread over this coral in about 5 weeks. Also notice several single, new disease spots way ahead of the margin. Anecdotally, the overall disease prevalence in areas our strike teams have been diving (nearshore northern Miami-Dade) is still relatively low.

This seems to be following the same pattern as last year when more treatments were required in May and June, and once again seems to correspond to the onset of the rainy season (we had a very rainy end of April). 

On May 8 at 11 a.m. EST, Reef Resilience Network is hosting a webinar – Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease: Lessons Learned & Resources from Florida. Registration is required. 

Florida’s corals reefs have been experiencing devastating effects of a multi-year outbreak of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD). This disease has now been observed and reported in several other Caribbean locations. In response, experts from Florida have been compiling their knowledge, resources, and lessons learned to share with others. Join us to hear from Dana Wusinich-Mendez (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Maurizio Martinelli (Florida Sea Grant), and Dr. Andrew Bruckner (Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary) as they discuss our current knowledge of SCTLD, Florida’s response to this disease outbreak, the status of SCTLD in the Caribbean, and current resources available on the disease. Presentations will be followed by a Question & Answer session with these experts

Register Here: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3016249964871940107