A new study has confirmed what federal wildlife officials long suspected: dredging at PortMiami to make way for massive new ships killed far more coral than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicted.
The study, published this month in the online journal PeerJ, sought to set the record straight on what exactly killed coral around the $205 million dredge and come up with more realistic expectations from such work. The Corps had contended a disease-outbreak was largely responsible, while state environmental regulators and conservationists argued that mud stirred up by the dredge or leaked from a barge as it ferried sediment offshore smothered coral and clouded water.
Using evidence gathered by the Corps, including photographs taken before, during and after, researchers said sediment spread across an area about 14 times bigger than what was allowed under a Corps permit, causing coral to die. After warm temperatures in the summer of 2014 triggered widespread bleaching and disease, coral stressed by the sediment died in larger numbers than nearby coral, the study found.
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