FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The $1.3 billion project to improve, deepen and widen Port Everglades is still in limbo because of the millions of precious corals and other endangered marine species that will be impacted once the dredging begins.
“Some of the last remaining staghorn corals now in Florida are here around Port Everglades,” Ross Cunning, a research biologist with Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, said on a warm morning off the coast of Fort Lauderdale Beach.
Local 10′s Louis Aguirre joined researchers led by coral scientists from the John G. Shedd Aquarium as the team documented how many living corals there are in the waters off Port Everglades, thriving against all odds.
“We need to protect those corals from every threat that we can to give them the best possible chance to survive,” Cunning said.
The site surveyed is right next to Port Everglades, with plans looming for the Army Corps of Engineers to deepen and widen the port to make room for larger and more modern vessels, but at what impact to this fragile marine ecosystem?
“We need to get a really good map of where the corals are here, and then really think carefully about where the dredge sediment is likely to go and which areas of that coral map are going to be affected,” explained Andrew Baker, a professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami Rosentiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science.
It’s been a devastating 40 years for Florida’s reef tract. Ninety percent of the state’s corals are gone, due to heat stress from climate change, disease, nutrient, and sediment pollution.
These corals here are the survivors and scientists say they must be protected at all costs.
Joining the mission is Rachel Silverstein from Miami Waterkeeper.
“There’s so much at stake here,” she said.
Silverstein speaks from experience. In 2013, when the Army Corps deepened PortMiami, 278 acres of coral reef was decimated, smothered by all that sediment that was raised during the dredging.
“We saw what happened in Port Miami when these projects go wrong, millions of corals are killed and still never been fixed, and potentially a massive disease outbreak was sparked by that dredging project,” Silverstein said.
Miami Waterkeeper sued the Army Corps of Engineers following that discovery. As a result, 10,000 corals were replanted to replace the more than a million that were lost.
The Port Everglades project is now delayed until the Army Corps formulates a comprehensive blueprint on how to best to protect these precious corals.
“Right next to that channel, there are many different species of coral, several that are endangered species,” said Cunning. “So we can’t kill those corals by burying them in sediments they’re just too critical at this point.”
Added Silverstein: “There’s still not a plan to mitigate for the vast amount of corals estimated to be in the millions that are going to be killed during this project, and to make sure that we’re fully documenting all the listed precious species that are in this area that are at risk from the dredging.”
During a public information session for the project, the Don’t Trash Our Treasure team spoke to the project manager who said that the Army Corps of Engineers has learned its lesson after what happened at PortMiami.
“So we get compared a lot to Miami harbor phase three deepening, but we’re not going to be dredging that way here,” emphasized Stephen Meyer, project manager for the Army Corps’ Jacksonville District for the Port Everglades deepening and widening project. “There’ll be lots and lots of scrutiny on the dredging from both us and the regulatory agencies.”
In July, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service notified the Army Corps of Engineers that the project could not proceed because the Army Corps’, “(Biological assessment) lacks fundamentally important information that is needed to analyze the effects of the proposed project on species and critical habitat protected by the Endangered Species Act.”
“We’ve made a commitment, we’re going to take them out of those areas to our other natural reef enhancement sites and try to save them… so that is the goal,” underscored Meyer.
The science team says that creating this survey is a critical step to make sure that the same mistakes that happened at PortMiami don’t happen again.
“So we count and identify every single coral on that transect, which is 10 meters long, so then we’ll know how many corals there are,” Cunning said.
Added Baker: “It’s pretty urgent. We have a few years before dredging starts, but I think the urgency comes from the corals that survive in this channel are naturally very resilient, very hardy, very stress-resistant. We’ll never be able to save all of them, unfortunately, but the idea is to prioritize which ones we can get, the most important species, the largest colonies that might be reproductively mature, and we can use them as brood stock for breeding and save as many as we can.”
The Port Everglades Deepening and Widening project was estimated for completion by the spring of 2025, however, a start date has still not been announced.
The Port Everglades and Army Corps websites both contain details for the project that still has many hurdles to overcome.
While there is no date set for when the widening will begin, the research on how to do it right is happening right now.