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Reef Damage
On 04/27/03 ,Vone Research continued its monitoring of the
coral restoration project. First we arranged to meet Captain Schmidt at the
area that he discovered . We had tried several times to locate it without him
. We reported earlier that this area is close to the area where over 1,650
lbs. of dredge teeth were scattered over the reef. What we discovered is that
there are two impacted areas on the reef that we hadn't noticed before. It
appears that they occurred at separate times. One appears to be cable damage
consistent with the other injuries we have seen. The second cause is unknown.
There are approximately 10 live rocks with small hard corals on them and one
live rock with a barrel sponge attached which is in relatively good shape.
There also hard corals that are totally dead. We believe the live rock damage
is recent. Next we dove site # 27. There are still hard corals upside down on
this site. Maybe site # 27 is a control site on which the coral is allowed to
die for reference. Next we dove site # 22. This would be a great place to
bring somebody to show good repair work. Except for the barrel sponge
attachments everything is looking well. The barrel sponges are regenerating
and in about 10 to 15 years they may be back to normal again. We will have to
wait and see. We still have not received the information that we have
requested nearly three months ago, information that we require to repair the
damaged areas that the Hillsboro Inlet district is not being held responsible
for.
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