On 5/04/03, Vone Research continued its monitoring of the coral restoration project. First we dove site #27. Still nothing has been done here. The hard corals are dying. Next we dove the area with dredge teeth. They are still there. Next we dove side #37. The hard coral on this side is looking considerably better than the first time we reported about it. There's an obvious lack of soft coral attachment on this site. Next we went to site #54. This will probably be one of the monitoring sites because some work has recently been done here.

I want to believe that everyone getting this e-mail chose this career because they wanted to make a difference.

For some unknown reason, we are not being given even the basic information that we have been asking for. We just found out that the Hillsboro Inlet district has completed the reef repair work. To add insult to injury, I have been told " They should complete this work before March 1st". This means we've done a lot of worthless research dives and wasted a lot of valuable volunteer time because someone didn't feel that it was necessary to tell us that the repair work was finished or give us the report we had been asking for. Ok now we will stop asking and file a public records request.

We tried to avoid this disaster which we believe does compare with the atomic submarine that ran aground about ten years ago. The big difference is the amount of substrate damage and the acreage. Oh, yes, one other thing : the captain of the submarine was not told repeatedly that he is damaging reef. The first damage was discovered on 7/ 19/ 2002. The next damage was discovered on 11/16/02. It was approximately 520'x130'. Over the next few weeks we reported 3/8 of a mile of damage which did not include area #22 which we believe to be the largest area. On 12/01/03, we videotaped the subcontractor for Weeks dragging cable over the reef . This damage did not stop until we went to the media.

Now we're being told they made a mistake. Someone should be asking," Why wasn't floating cable in the specifications for the job." We have been told that this is an industry accepted standard procedure. Why was nothing done when we reported the first damage areas? We find it quite alarming that Tim Blankenship of CSI would withhold reports from Broward County so that we would not be able to get them. ( see email below ) This situation has been minimized from the beginning. We're not just reading the reports, we are diving the sites. It took Steve Higgins and David Stout to get Tim Blankenship to give us the datum that was used so we could find the smaller impact areas. What is happening here is criminal and it's not, it should be. Is CSI making money on repairing the reef they were supposed to protect? Maybe that's why they would not use volunteers. I don't know but I will find out. As I stated before, the repair work being done is of high quality. They just stopped too soon. Per the HEA, the reef will recover in 8 to 35 years. I cannot help but wonder how many of us will still be around? Impacted areas reduced from 116,361 to 35,467. I just cannot believe it . But very conveniently, we do not have any maps or reports depicting the size of the impacted areas.

Will CSI be fined for dumping dredge teeth on the reef? Are we going to allow contractors to destroy our reefs knowingly? Are we going to look the other way when acres of our precious reef are impacted and say," What a great learning experience!" Vone Research, Inc. will not. I guess site #27 will just die.

Stephen Attis

Vone Research, Inc.

( Email )

From: "Timothy K. Blankenship" <tblankenship@coastalsystemsint.com>

Date: Fri Apr 4, 2003  8:56:13 PM US/Eastern

To: "LESLEY HUGHES" <LEHUGHES@broward.org>

Subject: RE: 32204 - Hillsboro Inlet Reef Restoration Spreadsheet

Lesley,

 

All of the information has been incorporated into a GIS that will be

circulated to the agencies next week.  We had some technical problems

trying to get the photos incorporated, but I think we finally have the

bugs worked out.  I also had to wait until NCRI finished their last

control transects for one of the SHP files.  I am reluctant to send out

the detailed spreadsheets because then local interest groups start

manipulating the data, questioning the datum, numbers, etc.

 

Tim