This week’s video is from the ocean exploration and media organization OceanX.
The video this week is more a public service announcement. In the past 70 years, coral cover in the iconic Florida Keys has dropped from 50 percent to 5 percent and is predicted to fall even lower thanks to a brand-new villain known as “stony coral tissue loss disease.”
This waterborne blight first appeared in 2014 and can turn hundred-year-old corals to mush in a matter of weeks.
In this video, OceanX takes scientists from the Mote Marine Lab, Scripps Oceanography, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on an end-to-end survey of the Florida Reef Tract, in hopes of identifying the bacteria causing the corals to get sick and hopefully identify a cure.