First Draft: Hurricane Andrew Coral Reef and Water Quality Assessment

Szmant, Alina; Curry, Richard

INTRODUCTION: On September 16th, the marine section (Szmant, Curry) of the Resource Damage Assessment team started surveying the coral reef resources of Biscayne National Park and continued through the 22 nd of September. The team started at the southern end of the park moving northward along the seaward margin of the reef platform. The reefs evaluated were Ball Buoy reef on the southern boundary, moving north through Rubicon, Elkhorn, Alina's, Pacific, Ajax, Long, Triumph ending at the Kavorkian Memorial reef site on the northern boundary. An east west component was defined by evaluating the reefs at Bache Shoals, the Fowey wreck site and ending at Triumph reef. The short term purpose of this assessment was to obtain a simple, qualitative, "snapshot" of the damage done on the coral reef platform by the storm. At each of the sites, the team specifically looked for signs of breakage, abrasion, out of place or new rubble piles, an excessive or unusual silt cover, tissue loss, excessive abrasion and finally, sediment structure. In addition, samples were collected for water quality and sediment analyses because of a concern that a major impact of the hurricane on both Biscayne Bay and offshore marine communities would be a longer term deterioration of water quality caused by sediment resuspension and decaying organic matter.